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SiN(iT^KTo:^r Waters Davis 



A^ Future Life ? 



A Critical Inquiry into the Scientific 

Value oe the Alleged E^tihences 

THAT MAN'S Conscious I^er- 

soNALiTY Survives the 

Life of the Body 

EMBRACING 

A DISCUSSION OF THE DOCTRINES* OF RESURRECTION 
OF THE BODY, RE-INCARNATION, SPIRITISM, 
ANNIHILATION, THEORIES OF META- 
PHYSICIANS, PHENOMENA OF 
SPIRITUALISM, ETC 

BY 

Singleton TV^aters Davis, m. d. 

Author of '^he Scientific ^dispensation of a New T^eligion, 
Editor of ^he Humanitarian T^eview, etc. 



LOS ANGELKS, CAL.: 
HUMANITARIAN REVIEW PUBLISHING HOUSE 

No. 854 E. LEE ST. 
1907. 



US 



^ To the Genius of Science, calm and brave, -svho, 
^ holding high the Torch of Reason, ascends the 
Heights of Knowledge on the Stepping-stones of 
Solid Facts to the Blazing Temple of Wisdom built 
upon the Eternal Rock of Truth, this Book is reveren- 
tially Dedicated by Her faithful disciple. 

The Author. 



Gift 
Author 
(Person) 



PREFACE. 

^ In my position as editor of " The Humanitarian 
Review" — a magazine professedly ''devoted to the 
study of [among other things] mind and psychic 
phenomena" — I had been often asked by correspond- 
ents to state my "belief," or my opinion, as to the 
existence of a human " spirit " entity and of a " future 
life" after death. But, considering mere belief and 
opinions of little importance, I preferred not to pub- 
lish any response until I could have time to make a 
deliberate, well-considered, comprehensive statement 
of the facts and principles upon w^hich my belief and 
opinions rest, as of immeasurably more importance 
to others than such belief and opinions themselves. 
At length the resquests seemed to merge into de- 
mands, and I decided to publish a short series of 
articles, in response, in " The Review," but not so 
comprehensive in scope and minute in details, be- 
cause of limited space in the magazine, as the impor- 
tance of the subject really deserved. 

^ The First Paper of the series w^as printed in "The 
Review^" of May, 1906, with the intention of limiting 
the series to the monthly issues of that year, but the 
papers were so well received from the very first that 
I concluded to modify my plan so as to extend the 
series some three months longer. And in reponse to 
requests and suggestions of many approving readers, 
I decided to issue the series in "pamphlet form" as 
soon as through the magazine. But, as each suc- 
ceeding paper appeared, the interest of readers be- 
came more and more general and intense — as inferred 
from letters from "Review" correspondents. 

^ This enthusiastic interest of readers in the discus- 
sion of course affected the author, and I again modi- 

(Hi) 



iv A PUTURK LIFE? 

fied my plans so as to make the articles more elabo- 
rate in detail, broader in scope and extended in num- 
ber, so that instead of the series ending in the maga- 
zine of December, 1906, as first planned, the articles 
were made longer and continued into the number 
for August, 1907. This seemed to make neces- 
sary a change of my intention of printing a pam- 
phlet edition to a decision to publish the complete 
series in a cloth-bound book. And I hope readers 
will be pleased to have the work thus given a more 
elegant and durable dress. 

^ These several changes of plan while the papers were 
in process of publication have left their marks upon 
the w^ork as a w^hole, in the way of repetitions, rever- 
sions, w^ant of symmetry, etc. These defects would 
probably have been to a great extent avoided, could 
I have planned the work originally to be so elaborate 
and extended. Some other things w^hich mar the 
w^ork somew^hat, such as typographical errors, crude- 
ness of expression, etc., might have been measurably 
less had not my labor as editor, publisher and printer 
of "The Review" been so very exacting of my time 
and physical strength. 

^ As for the facts and principles brought forward in 
the work, I have been scrupulously careful to state 
them in the clearest, strongest, least ambiguous words 
and phraseology I could select, and the reasoning I 
have conscientiously endeavored to make rigorously 
logical, wholly regardless of results as to my desires 
and cherished preconceptions. If you, reader, can 
peruse its pages in a similar frame of mind, you will 
enjoy i;!ie reading of them as I have intensely enjoyed 
— nol: writing, but — putting them into type direct 
from my mind. SINGLETON W. DAVIS. 

Los Angeles, July 22, 1907. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I.— INTRODUCTORY. 



Section 1, A Childish Delusion. 2, The Real Question. 3, Three Theo- 
ries of a Future Life. 4, Of What does the Human Body Consist ? 5, Ul- 
timate Constituents of the Body. 6, Mind, Soul, Spirit — What ? 7, Per- 
sonality — The Ego. 8, Indestructibility of Matter and Motion. 9, Trans- 
mutation of Complex Substances. 10, Death. - - - 9-21 



CHAPTER II.— THE RESURRECTION THEORY. 

Section U, Origin of the Theory. 12, Christian Doctrine of Egyptian Or- 
igin. 13, A Revelation by the Sun-God. 14, The Body Transformed. 
15, Relation of the Spirit to the Resurrection. 16, The "New Theology" 
Theories. 17, Science Dispels the Illusion. 18, A Paradoxical Immor- 
tality. 19, Material Basis of the Theory's Origin. - - 22-32 



CHAPTER III.— RE-INCARNATION— METEMPSYCHOSIS- 
TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS. 

Section 20, Obscure Terminology. 21, Various Aspects of the Theory. 
22, Origin of the Doctrine. 23, The Theosophic View. 24, "Supports" 

. of the Theosophic Theory. 25, A Self-Defeating Scheme. 26, A Non- 
Consoling Hope — A Frigid Heaven. 27, Buddhism and Re-incarnation. 
28, A Real, Scientific Re-incarnation. 29, Huxley on the Reality. 33-41 



CHAPTER IV.— SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESES. 

Section 30, Terms Defined. 31, Is Man a Duad? 32, Revelation as Evi- 
dence. 33, Spiritism of the New Testament. 34, Worthless as Evidence. 
35, Universality of Belief in Spirits no Evidence. - - 42-52 



CHAPTER v.— SPIRITISM AS A WORKING HYPOTHESIS. 

Section 36, Is the Spiritistic Hypothesis Necessary? 37, Determinism. 
38, Is Spirit Necessary to Initiate Motion? 39, The Law of Unity. 40, 
Spiritism and Occultism ------ 53-64 

(v) 



vi A FUTURE LIFE? 



CHAPTER VI. — "SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTS" CRITICISED. 

Section 41, The Mechanical Hypothesis. 42, Monistic View of the Mechan- 
ical Theory. 43, Haeckel on the Soul and Immortality. 44, Dualistic 
View of the Mechanical Theory. 45, The Argument by Analysis. 46, The 
Synthethical Experiment. 47, Another Analogy Argument. - 62-76 



CHAPTER VII.— NEW-THOUGHT THEORIES OF THE 
SOUL AND A FUTURE LIFE. 

Section 48, What Is "New Thought" ? 49, Dr. Hudson's Hypotheses. 

DR. Hudson's hypotheses critic ai^ly examined. 

50, Has Man Two Minds? 51, Another Sandy Foundation, 52, Man has 
Two Minds is "Assumed." 53, Finite Mind Controls the Infinite Soul! 
54, The " Infinite" has Limitations ! 55, Is the Subjective Mind a Distinct 
Entity? 56, Eureka! "It Is the Soul!" 57, A Fatal Admission. 58, 
Subjective Mind "of the Earth Earthy." 59, A Final Assumption. 77-92 

CHAPTER VIII.— DOES SPIRITUALISM DEMONSTRATE A 

FUTURE LIFE ? 

Section 60, Essential Qualifications of a Critic. 61, Some Credentials of 
the Writer. 62, Some Psychic Experiences. 63, Studies of "Spiritual 
Phenomena. ' ' (The Author' s personal experience and investigation. ) 64, 
Results of the Investigation. 65, A Remarkable Platform Test. 66, A 
Stumbling-block Removed. 67, An Objection Answered. 68, A Curious 
Scientific Demonstration. - - - - - 93-112 



CHAPTER IX.— ON THE SO-CALLED PHILOSOPHY OF A 

FUTURE LIFE. 

Section 69, Deductive Reasoning as a Means of Proof. 70, Consensus of 
the World. 71, The Desire for Immortality. 72, Necessary to Complete- 
ness. 73, "The Law of Compensation Demands It." 74, The Doctrine 
Good"-True or False. 75, Kindness Sometimes Causes Pain. - 113-128 



CHAPTER X.— THE QUESTION OF A FUTURE LIFE FROM 
THE SCIENTIFIC STANDPOINT. 

Section 76, Introductory---The Status of Science. 

PART I. — FROM THE MECHANICAI, POINT OF VIEW. 
77, The Anatomical Mechanism. 78, What Operates these Machines? 79, 



CONTENTS vii 

Illustrations from Inanimate Nature. 80, The Conclusion from Facts of 
Physics. 

PART II. — FROM THE CHEMICAL POINT OF VIEW. 

81, Chemical Constituency. 82, The Law of Change. 83, Man Chiefly 
Water. 84, Chemistry of the Plasma. 85, The Verdict of Chemistry. 

PART III. — FROM THE PHYSIOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW- 

86, Nature of Physiological Function. 87, Physiological Automatism. 88, 
The Physiological Ultimate. 89, Does the Brain Think ? 

PART IV. — FROM THE PSYCHOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW. 

90, What Is Psychology? 91, The Substance of Mind or Soul. 92, Psy- 
chic Revelations 93, Knocking Down a "Man of Straw." 94, Another 
Baseless Objection. ----- 129-156 



CHAPTER XL— SOME MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS. 

Section 95, "Weighing the Soul." 96, The Evasive Explanation. 97, 
The Agnostic View. 98, Psychic Research Society's Conclusion. 157-166 



CHAPTER XIL— RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION. 
Section 99, Recapitulation. 100, Conclusion. - - - 167-168 



A FUTURE] LIFE? 



-o 



CHAPTER I. 

IISTTRODUCTORY. 

§ 1. — A CHILDISH DELUSION. 

MAN, in his natural eg-otism, has assumed that 
he is of supreme importance in the infinite uni- 
verse; that the g-ods or a g"od, or an immanent intelli- 
g-ence and beneficence, planned, built and set in motion 
the almig-ht}^ cosmos of matter, from the less than micro- 
scopic indivisible atom to the gfrandest sun in all of the 
g^alax)" of the stars, with the prime object and purpose 
of subserviency to him; that "while all thingfs shall pass 
away" into eternal nothing:ness, he alone of all created 
thing-s and being-s, in some state, shall live forever! 

But, thoug"h his eg^otism is ** monumental " and his con- 
ceptions of his environment and the cosmic order are ex- 
tremely childish when viewed from a scientific standpoint, 
we shall not berate him, or censure him, or cast him down 
from his real altitude in the scale of natur^; for from this 
same scientific view-point we see that in intellectual de- 
velopment he IS a child and must think in childish terms, 
and that his conceptions are the natural and leg'itimate 
productions of his organism and its inheritance and envi- 
ronment. We see an infant tr}^ to pick up a sunbeam, or 



10 A FUTURE LIFK? 

to gfrasp a beautiful butterfly far above the reach of its 
little arm, but we do not reproach it or ridicule . ; we 
but smile and caress it, and wonder at its ingfenuosness. 
So reader, while you read these pages, and feel a tempta- 
tion to be harshly critical and censorious of this writer, 
please keep in mind not onl}^ that the race is intellectu- 
ally a family of children, but that I who write (with the 
printer's pencil — metal type) am one of that family, and 
do not presume to profess that I have reached intellectual 
manhood while all my brothers and sisters are yet little 
children; I claim only to have reached the top of a little 
hill on my path of life which seems to afford me some- 
what of a vantag-e over some, at least, of my "fellow- 
travelers in this vale of " mirages, as to point of view. 

§ 2. — THE REAL QUESTION. 

When the sincere but simple-minded child of the soil, 
or the sage of the great universit3% asks, "If a man die, 
shall he live ag*ain?" we should not answer dogmatically, 
nor by a mere "play upon words," as is almost if not quite 
always done; and so believing, I herein shall try to say 
exactly what I mean, and hope that the reader will accept 
what I say as "bread," not ''a stone" — as sincere expres- 
sion ; and I shall try to present that which I conceive to 
be the truth, not on the ground that it is the truth be- 
cause I believe it is, or say it is, but because it is affirmed 
by th.Q facts of nature which I shall cite as evidence. 

What is the r^^/ question? It is not as to the mere re- 
suscitation of the body or of the mind or "soul," after 
the event we call death, but it is this: Does the human 
personality continue to exist after death? That is, is there 
a tomorrow to this life considered as today and death as 
its night? If this life is a summer-time and death a win- 



INTRODUCTORY. 11 

ter, will that winter end and we enter upon another sum- 
mer, or another da3% full}^ conscious of our life's former 
summer, or of its yesterda}'? Shall we awaken after death 
with the knowledge that we lived before death, and with 
remembrance of the events and associations of that pre- 
vious life, as we may awake tomorrow morning with the 
life of toda}^ not only remembered but with consciousness 
of identity and continuity of personality? Any other 
kind of a "future life " would practically be the life of an- 
other being, and of no more interest to us now than is 
that of the earth-life of a person who is to be born a thou- 
sand 3^ears hence. 

§ 3. — THRKE THEORIES OF A FUTURE LIFE. 

There are in existence now and have been for thousands 
of years, three principal and quite distinct theories of a 
future life, or continuity of life after death. These are: 

(a) The material body may pass directly out of this 
world into another without death, in exceptional cases, 
or it may die and at some future time be resurrected and 
then pass into another world, and there live forever. For 
convenience, I shall call this the Resurrection Theory. 

(d) The "spirit" or the "soul" leaves the body at the 
death of the latter and enters upon another life in the 
body of another parentage, human or animal. This, I 
call the Re-incarnatio7i Theory^ — although there are two 
phases of it : the notion of transmigration and that of re- 
incarnation proper. 

(<:) The body at death passes to final dissolution while 
the "soul" or "vSpirit," the ego or personality, passes into 
another state of conscious existence, there, or in succeed- 
ing states, to continue forever. This, in all of its varia- 
tions, I shall call the Sfiritistic Theory. 



12 A FUTURE LIFE? 

(x) As opposed to each and all of these theories of a 
future life, is the theory that the phenomena of life, inclu- 
ding" mind or thougfht, emotion, etc., are the products of 
the nervous tissues and organs of the living- body, and as 
such, cease at the death of the body; consciousness and 
personality being the result of the correlative and con- 
current activities of the organism, they become extinct at 
death. This, I shall call the Monistic Theory. 

In this discussion of the question of a future life I shall 
take up the above four principal propositions in the order 
there indicated b}^ letters, and devote a chapter to each. 
But before proceeding to discuss these theories, I will 
briefly consider a fev^ fundamental facts of biological 
science which I think must be relied upon as a basis for 
intelligent inquiry into the merits and demerits of these 
theories — a solid foundation for a carefully-built super- 
structure — a firm fulcrum for the sure support of an effec- 
tive lever of logical reasoning, iconoclastic and construc- 
tive. To this end let us first inquire, 

§ 4. — OF WHAT DOES THK HUMAN BODY CONSIST? 

The most apparent fact as to the structure of the hu- 
man body is that it consists of a multiplicity of parts so 
joined together and inter-related that while each does its 
own peculiar dut}^ to which it is specifically adapted, 
the}^ all act for the common welfare. The action of the 
lung's in supplying the oxygen to the blood and ejecting 
the carbon from the vital domain, is absolutely essential 
to the life and integrity of every other part, organ or tis- 
sue; the action of the heart and blood-vessels is indispen- 
sable to each and every part; the brain and sense-motor 
nerves contribute not alone to their own welfare, but to 
that of the entire body. It may be stated as a biological 



INTRODUCTORY. 13 

law, that Each part of the human body acts for the good 

of the whole. And it is this evSsential co-operation of its 

various and ver}^ dissimilar parts — tissues and orgrans — 

that constitutes the whole an Indvidnal — an indivisible 

unit. "But," says one, '* there are certain parts or organs 
whose functions are intended not for the gfood of the in- 
dividual of whom the}" are parts, but for the production 
of prog-eny and its sustenance in infancy, and this seems 
to prove that 3"0ur 'law' is not a gfeneral law." 

Your view is not broad enouofh. The individual is it- 
self a part of a g-reater Individual — the race, Humanity. 
It is this larg"er individual to which the last word in the 
above statement of the law, "the whole," applies. It is 
these propag^ating- orgfans of the lesser individuals which 
materially or corporeally unite them togfether to consti- 
tute the g^reater individual, making- a material solidarity 
of the race. But more : The human body is itself but a 
community of very small individuals, called cells, each of 
which is born, lives, propag-ates others of its kind, acts 
in g-eneral for the gfood of the whole communit}" of cells, 
the human body, and at leng-th dies and is dissolved. A 
man, then, is a compound individual, a com7nunity o f in- 
dividtials, a microcosm of cells as the race is a macrocosm 
of men. This is what the human bod}" is, org"anically. 

§ 5. — ULTIMATE CONSTITUENTS OF THE BODY. 

But this is not the last analysis. The cells themselves 
are complex; all of the living* tissues are compounds of 
well-known simple chemical elements. Strictly speak- 
ing-, the earth's surface is at the top of the sky, for our 
atmosphere is just as properly a part of the g-lobe as is 
the ocean. The earth, then, is about three-fourths air 
and water. The elements that principally contstitute the 
mechanical mixture forming- the atmosphere are oxyg"en 



14 A FUTURE LIFE? 

and nitrog-en; and the elements constituting: the chemical 
compound called water are oxygen and hydrog^en. Be- 
sides, these three elements are constituents of very much 
of the solid portion of the g"lobe, so that the earth is ap- 
proximately four-fifths oxyg-en, hydrog"en and nitrog"en, 
thoug"h carbon is one of its most important constituents, 
and some sixty other elements, enter more or less into 
its composition. 

Now, it is a somewhat curious fact that this statement 
of the earth's chemical constituency is almost exactly 
true of the human body! A man, chemically, is almost 
wholly constituted of oxyg-en, hydrog^en, nitrogfen and 
carbon, with comparatively small quantities of a number 
of other chemical elements, as calcium (lime), phospho- 
rus, sodium, iron, etc. The constituency of the human 
body resembles that of the earth in another way: like 
the earth, the body is chiefly water, and it is surrounded 
with atmospheric air, like the body of the earth, which 
is not only indispensable as breath, but equally so as a 
means of proper surface pressure, for without this pres- 
sure no human being- could live a sing-le moment. 

The human body, then, is an epitome of the earth, and 
another curious fact is, that this identity of constituency 
Oi a man and the earth was probably known by the in- 
habitants of the valleys of the Nile and of the Tig-ris and 
Euphrates more than ten thousand years ag-o, and possi- 
bly more than twent}^ thousand. Their traditions and 
the oldest tablet writingfs and temple inscriptions teach 
us that they believed that the gods made man of clay, as 
a potter moulds his handiwork; and in Genesis we are 
told that the "man" created "in the begfinningr" was by 
Elohim (the g-ods) called Adam, which means earth, or 



INTRODUCTORY. 15 

''red earth," that is, earth void of veg:etation — cla3\ But 
in making: this reference to Genesis I do not mean to con- 
ve_v the idea that I believe man learned of this similarity 
of the human body to the earth in a supernatural manner, 
but that probabl}^ there existed a prehistoric civilization 
in which science was broug^ht to a liig-h state of perfec- 
tion, and that these records made in a later ag^e are but 
fossils — the decaying- remains of real science deg"enerated 
into superstition along- with natural decay of the race or 
peoples who developed it and then, having- reached the 
noonda)^ of human developmentabilit}^ (to coin a needed 
word), went down to the evening: when their sun of sci- 
ence set and the long- nigfht of an ag-e of superstition suc- 
ceeded. That astronom}^ ages ag"o was a science is shown 
by Sir Norman Lockyer, and I believe the Ptolemaic S3^s- 
tem was but an imperfect fossil of a far more ancient sci- 
entific astronomy. 

This reference to the ancient ideas is not a dig-ression, 
for I expect to show later in this discussion that modern 
notions of re-incarnation and the resurrurection of the 
body are but thought fossils, or degfenerate very ancient 
scientific knowledge of the chemical constituency of the 
body and of the earth, and of the transmig-rations of 
the chemical elements throug-h numberless successive 
bodies, as our chemistry and physiolog)'- of today demon- 
trates, and of the astronomical movements and cycles. 

§ 6. — MIND, SOUL, SPIKIT — WHAT? 

A largfe majority of intelligfent, educated people think 
of a man as a dualit}^ or a trinity, while a very respecta- 
ble minority, many of them advanced scientists, believe 
that a man is really an '^individual." The former believe 
a man consists of a material bod}^ inhabited b)^ an imma- 



16 A FUTURE LIFE? 

terial soraething*, by some called "soul" or "spirit," and 
by others "mind," considered as an entity, while others 
think mind and soul or spirit are not the same thing", and 
some believe soul and spirit are not the same. 

The orig-inal notion of spirit seems to have been that 
which causes movement, and with that notion was the be- 
lief that matter in and of itself was "dead" — incapable 
of moving". When the wind does not blow, the tree stands 
apparently motionless, the dry leaves lie still upon the 
g"round, the sea is placid ; and when no air as breath en- 
ters the nostrils of man or beast they lie motionless in 
death. The word spirit is from a Greek word meaning: 
air, wind or breath — whence our word inspire, to take in 
breath. So the writer of Genesis said: "And the Lord 
God formed man of the dust of the g"round, and breathed 
into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a 
living" souL^^ (ii:7.) He says, "the spirit of God moved 
upon the face of the waters," meaning", orig-inally, that 
when "the earth was without form, and void, and dark- 
ness was upon the face of the deep," migfhty winds swept 
over " the face of the waters" and so added to the weird 
disorder of the primeval chaos. And so of other ancient 
writing"s and inscriptions. 

Gradually, in the course of thousands of years, this 
purely materialistic conception of the nature of the cause 
of movement, "spirit" of the spiritists and "force" of the 
physicists, has to some extent been supplanted by a hazy 
conception of an indefinable "immaterial" entity "back 
of matter," or "behind" it, or "within" it, which is as- 
sigrned as the cause of motion or action (phenomena), — 
on the one hand called the "spirit" of man and the "God" 
of nature, on the other, called " vitality" and the "forces 



INTRODUCTORY. 17 

of nature." Even so, we still frequently hear and read of 
spirit as " a finer state of matter," a thing- capable of re- 
flecting- light so as to be seen or photographed, and of 
the 'Vital fluid," ''nervous fluid," "electric fluid," and 
even of the "dissipation" of light and heat into absolute 
vacuity of space, just as though these "modes of motion" 
were rarefied matter like the water in evaporation being 
"dissipated" from the sea into the atmosphere! Such no- 
tions I venture to call ridiculousl)^ crude, thoug-h in man}^ 
cases reputed scientists still entertain them. 

Some people use the word spirit as S3^non3^mous with 
mind, while others speak of "mortal mind" as being- far 
inferior to spirit; and some use the words soul and spirit 
as synonymous, while others think the soul and the spirit 
are two quite distinct entities. But while everyone knows 
what is meant b}^ the word mind, the words spirit and 
soul convey to no one a clear idea of what is meant by the 
speaker or writer who uses them. Yet, I shall use these 
terms in this discussion, but with the understanding- that 
each reader is free to give them his own interpretation. 

§ 7. — PERSONALITY — THE EGO. 

In any discussion of any theory of a future life, it is 
essential that we have a clear idea of what constitiutes 
personalit}^ for, as was shown in §2, any future existence 
which is not either a continuance or a resumption of the 
personality after death, is of no practical or personal in- 
terest to us. What is it, then, that is represented by / 
and me? We have seen (§4) that a man is a communit}^ 
of lesser individuals, all, in general, contributing- to the 
common welfare. This unity of motive and action forms 
a soldarity that is the basis of personality, but something- 
is needed to complete the personality, and that is a brain 



IK A FUTURE LIFE? 

center in which all of the constituents of such community 
mergfe their individualities into a common unit. To illus- 
trate: The two eyes each receive a distinct and slightly 
different imag"e of an object upon the retina, but the op- 
tic nerves from both retinas interming-le the little strands 
of which they are composed so completely between the 
eyes and the sig"ht center in the brain that the two im- 
agfes are there mergfed into one, and we "see sing-le." So 
must be merg-ed into unity all of the components of the 
man, which is done by the whole system of nerves con- 
centrating- in the one g-reat merg-er, the brain; and, as 
the action of the two eyes is merg-ed into one fercei)tion^ 
so the action of all the components of the whole body is 
merg-ed into one consciousness^ and this unity and con- 
sciousness of it constitutes the e^o^ the personality , As 
long- as the integ-rity of the unitizing: nerves and g-reat 
brain-center is maintained, consciousness and personality 
continue ; otherwise they cannot, and universal experi- 
ence and observation prove to the common sense of all 
that this is true. The continuance of conscious person- 
ality after death and dissolution of the body can be con- 
ceived of as possible only upon the theory that the mind, 
soul or spirit is an entity and not subject to the physical 
and chemical laws which render death and dissolution of 
the bod)^ inevitable. This theory will be quite fully dis- 
cussed in the chapters on re-incarnation and spiritism. 

§ 8. — INDESTRUCTIBII^ITY OF MATTER AND MOTION. 

Modern scientists affirm the indestructibibility of mat- 
ter, althoug-h the proposition does not admit of demon- 
stration. It is assumed to be true because there is not a 
sing-le known fact ag-ainst it — not an ioto of matter has 
ever been known to pass from existence to nothing-ness ; 



INTRODUCTORY. 19 

and the human mind in reality is incapable of conceiving: 
of such annihilation, thougfh many have "believed" that 
in ordinary fire the fuel is to a large extent utterh^ anni- 
hilated. The theologfical notion of the final destruction 
of the world by fire implies that *'all thing's shall pass" 
into utter nothingness, but the modern scientist knows 
that if all the forests upon the earth and all the coal and 
oil within it were to he burned, that not a vsingle grain of 
their elementary constituents would be destroyed. This 
indestructibility of matter is often cited as evidence that 
man is immortal, and when I come to discuss spiritism, 
in another chapter, I will try to show the fallacy of that 
argument. Not so clearly recognized but equally true 
as the indestructibility of matter, is the persistence of mo- 
tion — that motion cannot be annihilated, but assumes 
different modes under varying conditions. And a correl- 
ative proposition, equally true, is this: that neither mat- 
ter nor motion is ever initiated — *' created" out of no- 
thing, but that the precedent of every n^v^ fonn of mat- 
ter was another form, and of every new mode oi motion 
was another mode. The connection of all this with the 
question of a future life may not be here very apparent to 
the reader, but its relevancy^ will plainly appear later on 
in this discussion. 

§ 9. — TRANvSMUTATlON OF COMPLEX SUBSTANCES. 

All groups or bodies of matter composed of two or more 
elements chemically combined, and all masses of matter 
of one or more elements mechanically maintained, are 
unstable and more or less ephemeral. Incessant change of 
relationship of the simple elements, ultimate particles 
and masses of matter is the order of the universe, and it 
may be stated as a general truth (**law"), ih^t tke more 



20 A FUTURE LIFE? 

complex the mass or body, the less stable the union of its ele- 
ments. The ultimate indivisible particle of the simple 
chemical element, if such there be, is the only thing* in 
the universe which is absolutely indestructible and eter- 
nal in duration. 

§ 10. — DEATH. 

What is death? Some quibblers say there is no death; 
other quibblers say all matter is alive. Both take un- 
warranted liberties with words. A gfrowing- tree is live 
matter; cut down, sawed into lumber and seasoned, it is 
dead matter ; thorougfhly dissolved by decay, it is neither 
alive nor dead. The skin of the living- ox is live matter; 
the leather in your shoes is dead matter; the iron nails 
in your shoes is neither living" nor nor dead matter. It is 
literally true that "in the midst of life we are in death." 
With the first breath of the new-born infant, death with- 
in its little body begins, and its first exhalation carries 
out a portion of its dead body! And thence on death is 
in fellowship with life until the last breath is taken, when 
death is supreme and life is naught. It is this incessant 
dying of the little ephemeral individuals of the human 
community — the body, that supplies the power of living 
action, and causes the demand for food and drink out of 
which to build new cells to take the place of those which 
die, and so through every moment of a man's lifetime he 
is dying and throwing out of his living body of one mo- 
ment his dead body of the moment preceding. 

What becomes of this matter after its ejection from the 
body? It goes to help fill the sea, to make the soil of the 
land; to the sky to fall again as rain; to the atmosphere 
to supply it with carbon and nitrogen — food for briars 
and roses, thistles arid figs, weeds and wheat; and then, 



INTRODUCTORY. 21 

food for worms and birds, cattle and — men! Yes we are 
not only descendants of our forefathers, but we are liter- 
ally, to some extent, resun'ections and re-carnations oi the 
elementary matter which composed their bodies, and even 
our own of past years and of yesterday! But — does con- 
scious personality survive the final death of the body ? 

This question will be discussed in succeeding" chapters 
of this work, but it is not the author's object to make a 
direct attempt to prove that man is destined to a life be- 
yond the death of the body, nor yet that he is not; but, 
rather, it is his aim to give, from the scientific standpoint, 
a comprehensive survey of the grounds upon which the 
various forms of belief in a future life are based. If the 
reader finds confirmation, or if he finds refutation herein, 
let him remember that this author did not create the 
facts — he only tried to *'hold a mirror up to nature" to 
truly reflect them. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE RESURRECTIOIN^ THEORY. 

§ 11. — ORIGIN OF THE THEORY. 

"And the graves were opened; atid many bodies of 
the saints which slept arose, and came out of the g-raves 
after his resurrection." — Matt, xxvii :52-53. 

"Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I mj^self : 
handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, 
as ye see me have." — Luke xxiv:39. 

WHKNCB came into the mind of man the notion 
that after the death of his body he should some- 
time and somewhere resume life in that same bod}^? 

The belief in the resurrection of the body is older than 
history, almost as widespread as the race itself, and per- 
sists in the minds of millions of people today in the face 
of modern science. Not the ignorant and simple-minded 
only believe in the resurrection of the bod3% but people 
who have brains and education — even those familiar with 
science — many of them, believe in it; professors in our 
great colleg-es and universities, learned authors, priests, 
preachers, king's, popes, and presidents of the United 
States, believe in this theory. Why? Because it is ap- 
parently reasonable and is supported by "authority." 

Here is the logical chain that binds even learned men 
to this belief : The Bible is the infallible word of an om- 
niscient and absolutely truthful being; the Bible tells us 
not only that the dead body 5/2^// (5^ resurrected, but that 
many dead bodies have been resurrected. <'.See the New 



THE RESURRECTION THEORY. 23 

Testament for the doctrine and accounts of the "raising- 
of Lazarus," the coming- up of "many" out of the graves 
at the time of the crucifixion, and, especial!}^ the resurrec- 
tion of the bod}^ of Jesus after the crucifixion.) The logic 
is correct as to the deduction; but is the major premise 
true? — is the Bible the word of an infallible being-? Wh}^ 
do learned men believe it is? Because they are hypnot- 
ized by a million-time suggestion from infancy to old 
age. Suggestion rules the world ! And the seed of sug"- 
gestion is ref>etition and the "good ground" in which it 
g'erminates most perfectly is childhood. Suggestion is a 
mighty god whose altar is "the mother's knee," whose 
temple is the home and the school house and the church, 
whose priests are the parents, the pedagogues and the 
preachers; and like Jehovah he often puts into his proph- 
ets a "lying spirit." But the belief in the resurrection 
is not of Christian origin. 

§ 12. — CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF EGYPTIAN ORIGIN. 

The doctrine of the resurrection as an element of the 
Christian religion was not inherited from Judaism, nor 
was it originated b}" Jesus, the evangelists, or the other 
New Testament heroes and reputed authors. It is not 
an Old Testament doctrine. This feature of Christianity, 
like all else that disting-uishes it from Judaism, is of an- 
cient Eg"3^ptian origin, modified more or less b}" Grecian 
philosoph}^ and poetry. Take the Graeco-Eg'yptian ele- 
ments out of Christianity, the residue is Judaism ; take 
away its Judaistic elements, the residue is Graeco-Eg'yp- 
tian paganism. Comparison of the Judaistic, Eg"3"ptian 
and Greek mythologies with the the Christian doctrines, 
leg-ends and rites, demonstrates this. 

Not only do Eg"3Ttian records and art relics, but their 



24 A FUTURE LIFE? 

custom of mummification, prove that the Eg'yptiatis from 
pre-historic times believed in the resurrection of the body. 
Whence or how did they get the idea ? 

§ 13. — A REVELATION BY THE SUN-GOI). 

Analog'y in Egryptian theolog^y held a place correspond- 
ing" to induction in modern science. The fundamental 
principles or premises of the Egyptian and other ancient 
mythologies are these: Man is an epitome of the universe; 
Human life, death and resurrection is an analogue of the 
apparent movement of the sun in a period of one day and 
night and of one solar year; The sun being an anthropo- 
morphous god, the phenomena of his dail)^ and yearly 
birth (at sunrise and winter solstice), growth, power (at 
noon and summer solstice), decline, death (at sunset and 
autumnal equinox), and resurrection (at sunrise and the 
vernal equinox), corresponds to a human life — and thus 
the sun-god reveals, by analogy, that man, like his god, 
is born, lives, dies and rises again. Hence, even now the 
"evening of life," the "winter" and "night of death," the 
"resurrection morn,^^ etc., are common expressions. 

Then, the phenomena of general life in the course of a 
year, by analogy, seemed to demonstrate to the poetic 
Egyptian mind the truth of the theory of the resurrec- 
tion. In the spring Mother Earth gives birth to a new 
vegetation; the flocks of the shepherds bring forth their 
lambs at and about the time of the spring equinox; 
it is then appears the new-born ox an ass; then the birds 
lay their eggs and the birdlings are born: it is then the 
honey-bees swarm out and start new families — then, life 
is born. In mid-summer the growth of vegetation in gen- 
eral has grown up to its accustomed limit, and in autumn 
it dies and the seed is buried in the ground, and the ani- 



THE RESURRECTION THEORY. 25 

mal world as to its activity is, metaphorically, dead and 
buried in the g^rave of winter. Then, varying- the poetic 
fancy (which to the oriental intellect is science), when 
spring" comes again, the grave of winter opens and all life 
is resurrected^ the earth is decked with blossoms, the lord 
of heaven, the sun, "rises ag-ain" from the g-rave below the 
equator, 'tis the morning- of the new year, the "resurrec- 
tion morn," and the time for the g"lad Easter festival! 

§ 14. — THE BODY TRANSFORMED. 

Do you not see here where Paul got his arg-ument for 
the resurrection, when he exclaims in confident triumph 
that the new plant cannot come forth unless the seed first 
die? And here he got his idea of being "raised a spirit- 
ual bod}^" for though he was held by the ancient myth- 
philosophy to the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, 
some faint rays of the dawn of modern science showed 
him that the new plant resurrected was not actuall)^ the 
identical one of the previous year from which it sprang", 
and to maintain his argument by strict analog-y he was 
compelled to introduce the supplementary theory of the 
new body. He had no conception of a human "spirit" 
or "soul" living" without a body of some kind. 

§ 15. — RELATION OF THE SPIRIT TO THE RESURRECTION. 

But though the apostle (extending his similitude) says, 
"It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. 
There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body" 
(1. Cor. xv:44), it is evident from his attempted explana- 
tion of the resurrection in the fifteenth chapter of 1. Cor- 
inthians that he believed the "spiritual body" was the 
"natural body" transformed at the time of its resurrec- 
tion, and the "sowing" of the body was essential as seed 



26 A FUTURE LIFK ? 

— " bare gfrain" — from which the spiritual body as a new 
plant should be "raised." In this statement of his theory 
of the resurrection, Paul Cor, rather, the writer of the 
Pauline epistles) shows plainly the combination of two 
more ancient orig"inal elements of the Christian doctrine, 
the Kg"yptian and the Grecian. 

In Kgfyptian inscriptions and statuary the spirit or the 
"soul" is symbolized by a wing"ed, bird-like form. In 
some of the tombs have been found statues of the "soul" 
posed as if keeping- guard over the mummy of the body 
which it occupied before death. The object of mummifi- 
cation and this guardianship was evidently to make sure 
that the soul would be able to find and re-enter its body 
at the resurrection. The belief of certain Christian sects 
today that the soul remains in the grave with the body 
until the resurrection is undoubtedl3% T think, a heritage 
of the old pagan notion symbolized by the soul-bird in 
the tomb. But this was not exactly Paul's theory. The 
Greeks likened the living- body to the larva (caterpillar), 
the dead body to the chrysalis lying in the ground during 
winter, and the soul to the butterfly that is resurrected 
from the chrysalis. Indeed the ver}'- word soul in Greek, 
psyche, is literally a butterfly. The larva and chrysalis 
correspond to Paul's "natural body" and the butterfly to 
his "spiritual body." And here is the origin of the Chris- 
tian notion that we shall have wings after the resurrec- 
tion ! 

§ 16. — THE "new theology" THEORIES. 

The influence of modern science has affected the opin- 
ions of many of the more intelligent, learned, progressive 
Christians as to this as well as all other dogmas of their 
old creeds, and the representatives of what is sometimes 



THE RESURRECTION THEORY. 27 

called the new theolog'y are attempting- to "harmonize sci- 
ence and relig-ion" as to the doctrine of the resurrection 
by putting- a "spiritual" in place of the older literal inter- 
pretation of the New Testament declaration on the sub- 
jects. These new explanations are theological boomer- 
rangs that strike back at the entire Christian system, 
old and new, by exciting- suspicion in the minds of peo- 
ple both in and out of the churches that the creeds are 
unreliable and the scriptures they puport to epitomize are 
ambigfuous or utterly fallacious. 

Some Christian theologians tell us that the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus was spiritual, not corporeal; that his body 
did not literally awaken from actual death and ascend 
sk3^ward to a place " above" the earth. And yet it is re- 
ported by the Evangelist that when Jesus " appeared" to 
his disciples thej^ "supposed they had seen a spirit," and 
that to convince them that it was not a spirit but a body 
of literal, material flesh and bones which they saw, Jesus 
said to them: "Handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not 
flesh and bones, as y^ see me have." And to make the 
demonstration more complete, he then ate "a piece of 
a broiled fish, and of a honeycomb." Luke xxiv:39-42, 43. 
Then it is related (v. 51) that "he was parted from them 
and carried up into heaven." If Jesus rose not bodily, 
but his spirit arose on the third day, are we to believe his 
spirit laj'^ three days in the sepulchre? The gospels say 
unequivocall}^ that Jesus "g-ave up the ghOvSt" while on 
the cross and that the body arose from the dead. 

This is the old-fashioned doctrine — the Eg"yptian form 
of the belief; but Paul, with his Greek modification of 
the resurrection theory, directly and unconditionally con- 
tradicts it in these words: "Flesh and blood cannot in- 



28 A FUTURE LIFE ? 

herit the king-dom of God." 1. Cor. xv:50. 

§ 17. — SCIENCE DISPEI.S THE II.LUSIONS. 

That which disting"uishes science from ordinary deduc- 
tions of superficial observers and analog"ists is, besides its 
orderly arrang-ements of facts and its inductive method, 
is its disillusionment — its ability to distinguish the real 
from the merel}^ apparent. A familiar illustration of this 
is furnished by astronomy in demonstrating the immense 
distances between the earth and the heavenly bodies and 
the almost infinite difference in these distances as opposed 
to their apparently short and equal distance " above" the 
earth and their nearness to one another; another, by the 
demonstration of the earth's spherical form and its axial 
and orbital movement, as opposed to its apparent flatness 
and fixedness; another, the immense size of the heavenl}^ 
bodies as opposed to their apparent diminutiveness; and 
another, that the sun, moon and stars do not move from 
east to west over or around the earth, as they appear to 
do, but that the moon only, moves around the earth, and 
that from west to east once in about twenty-eight days, 
instead of from east to west in about twenty-five hours. 

Science dispels quite effectually the Pauline illusion of 
a close analogy between the sowing of seed and the burial 
of the dead, the germination of the seed and the death 
and decay of the corpse, or the coming-up of a new plant 
and the resurrection of a new or spiritual body from the 
dead and decayed "natural" one in the grave. Science 
shows that the human body dissolves after death into in- 
organic chemical elements and non-living compounds — 
is wholly destroyed and distributed to the soil, the sea, 
and the atmosphere, to ba again assimilated by plants, 
and thence on again as components of animal and other 



THE RESURRECTION THEORY. 29 

human bodies, in a limitless revolution. Science shows 
us that the seed when planted does not "die," but sets up 
a more rapid life-action — awakes frotn a comparatively 
dormant condition, a kind of hibernation, just as the living- 
buds on the deciduous trees do in the spring* after a sea- 
son of hibernation through the winter; the seed being- a 
bud surrounded by a supply of prepared nutriment suffi- 
cient to build up the new plant until it has made adequate 
root-connections with the soil and leaf-connections with 
the air to enable it to take its sustenance directly from 
these sources. Paul exclaims: "Thou fool, that which 
thou sowest is not quickened, except it die." 1. Cor. xv:36. 
But science convinces us that if the seed that has been 
sown die — if the germ die and its accompanying store of 
prepared nutriment rot, the seed will not and can not be 
"quickened." Paul may not himself have been a "fool" 
in making this remark, but he was more ignorant of plant 
life than the children in the lower grades of our common 
schools, and "inspiration" did not enlighten him. 

§ 18. — A PARADOXICAL IMMORTALITY. 

Science is equally destructive as to the butterfly illu- 
sion. There is no analogy between the transformation 
of a larva into the chrysalis state and the death of the 
human body. The larva and chrysalis correspond some- 
what to the pre-natal life of the human, and the coming 
forth of the butterfly corresponds to the birth of a living 
human being, not to a resurrection of either a dead bod}^ 
or of the soul or spirit from the dead bod)^ The butter- 
fly is simply the mature insect — the adult stage, in which 
the male and female consort and the eggs are laid for the 
propagation of the species; larvae or caterpillars can no 
more reproduce their kind than can the human embryo. 



30 A FUTURE LIFE? 

If this Greek supposed-analogy be carried out logfically, 
we should be forced to assume that all babies are born 
after the death an'd resurrection of their parents! And 
as for immortality, this analog-y is wholh^ discouragfing-; 
for the life of the butterfly is one of but a few hours, and 
then it dies of old agfe like the "natural body" of a man. 
To be resurrected to an immortality analog-ous to the life 
of a butterfly, or that of next year's g"rain-stalk, would be 
farcical and unworthy of the name, for it would be a life 
of mixed pleasure and pain, like the present, and g-rim 
Death would quickly call again to repeat his tragedy. 

The truth is, that the analogy between any and all of 
the events and phenomena of human existence and those 
of wheat or caterpillar-butterfly existence, so far as sci- 
ence reveals it, pertains strictly to the here and now, the 
material and natural, the mutable and mortal, and all 
bodies are "natural," and none "spiritual " but (etymo- 
logically) the atmosphere. 

§ 19. — MATERIAI, BASIS OF THE THKORY's ORIGIN. 

In § 5, I expressed my opinion that there may have been 
one or more prehistoric periods of scientific achievement 
nearly, if not quite, as great as that of the present — and 
possibly even greater, in some respects at least. There 
are certain philological and psychological fossils that in- 
dicate that such opinion has some foundation; and one of 
these psychological (or mental) fossils is the vague the- 
ory of the resurrection of the body. If we conceive of 
the race life as being wave-like in its advancement, we 
can see that humanity, in the course of millions of years, 
is carried, under evolutionary laws, not in a straight line 
of progress onward and upward, but alternately down 
into the troughs and up onto the crests of the waves of 



THE RESURRECTION THEORY. 31 

progress. To my mind, evolution pictures the progress of 
the human race as a man coming* out of the primordial 
protoplasm in the ooze at the bottom of the ancient ocean 
and out upon the eastern coast of a continent; thence 
westward taking* his way overland, now down into a val- 
ley and then up onto a hill or mountain, toward the west- 
tern coast; today he is crossing" a ridg^e of the "Rocky 
Mountains," and from his high scientific altitude he looks 
back through the telescope of evolution and sees (thoug-h 
he has forgfotten the events) the ocean he arose from — 
the dark valleys and bright crests of the "Blue Ridge" 
of the Alleghanies and the plains and table lands of com- 
parative mediocrity. Then he turns his scientific vision 
through the telescope of natural law to the westward — the 
future — and sees rising before him the lofty peaks of the 
Sierra Nevadas, with glimpses of the dark valleys inter- 
vening", and he hopes that when he ascends the hig"hest of 
those lofty peaks of scientific knowledge and g"eneral de- 
velopment that he will be able to see still g"reater heig"hts 
to which he shall attain; but alas! as I stand aside I see 
through a low pass lower mountains beyond — the Sierra 
Madre range, and beyond that, the foothills — the "Pa- 
cific Slope," down which he will peacefully g"o in racial 
decline until he enters the arid deserts and fertile fields of 
the Golden State— the "Golden Ag-e " of the race's "sec- 
ond childhood ! " But what is that I see beyond ? O, it is 
another ocean ! — the g"reat Pacific, fit symbol of an eter- 
nal future " pacific" oblivion ! As he came up out of the 
stormy Atlantic of the eternal past, so at last he will go 
down into an ocean of infinite futurity; but it is the Pa- 
cific ocean — an eternity of calm, of peace ! 

Mistake not my meaning-; this is g"iven as a picture of 
the race's term of existence as a part of the animal world, 



32 A FUTURE LIFE? 

not of the individual's existence. I have not thus pre- 
maturely arrived at the end of my story. 

So, viewing: the probable prog"ress of man in this lig"ht, 
I think the belief in the resurrection of the body ma3% at 
least in some degfree, be a fossil — a deg-eneration of a pre- 
historic biolog-ical and chemical science which had clearly 
discerned the phenomena and laws of the alternate and 
constant chemical and vital integfration and disinteg-ration 
in which the material elementary substances composing" 
a human body are the very same that have, in other com- 
binations, served as components of other preceding: hu- 
man bodies. The scientific resurrection, the resurrection 
of the atom, pertains to this life and this world only; and 
this bring-s me into touch with the subject of my next 
chapter, the Re-Incarnation Theory. 



CHAPTER III. 

RE-I]S^CAR]NrATION — METEMPSYCHOSIS — 
TRAJN^SMIGRATIOIS^ OF SOULS. 

The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting-. — Wordsworth. 

§ 20. — OBSCURK TERMINOLOGY. 

ONE of the essentials of science is definite termin- 
ology. Words and sentences which clearly and 
definitely convej^ to the hearer or reader the meaning of 
the speaker or writer are the very best evidence that the 
person who thus expressed his thought was a clear and 
orderl}'^ thinker upon that theme; and the use of indefi- 
nite, obscure or ambiguous terms and sentences are just 
as sure evidence that the user of them had not himself a 
clear and well-defined mental view of his subject-matter. 

In many cases obscure expression, though the sequence 
of misty thought, the fault is not that the thinker him- 
self is incapable of clear thinking upon even intricate and 
comprehensive questions, but is traceable to incongruity 
of the elements of the hypotheses upon which the thinker 
bases his ratiocination. One cannot hand to another a 
cup of clear water from a muddy spring-. 

Still another source of obscure expression is the varia- 
bleness of the meaning of words, and the borrowing of 
those having definite meaning in one department of inves- 
tigation or thought for use in a very dissimilar depart- 
ment without carefull}^ indicating* what modifications of 
meaning the old terms are intended to convey in their 
new field of use. And such use has a reflex action that 



34 A FUTURE LIFE? 

tends to not only obscurity but to actual vicious chang-es 
resulting- in positive error. Take for instance, the word 
"fluid." In its old and ordinary use the word conveys a 
very definite idea of a certain state of matter. But when 
discoveries in mag-netism and electricity were made, the 
students in the new branches of scientific inquiry chose 
to borrow rather than to invent a convenient term to ex- 
press the idea of movement along- certain lines of least 
resistance, along- so-called conductors, and so selected 
the word *'fluid" and established the misleading: phrases 
"electric fluid" and "magnetic fluid," which have done 
g-reat harm by conveying- a false notion of the nature of 
these "modes of motion" — the notion that they are mat- 
ter in fluid state. 

In the theory of re-incarnation as variously expounded 
under the names palingrenesis or re-incarnation, metem- 
psychosis, transmig-ration of the sonl, etc., the mysticism 
and vag-ueness of the original ideas resulted in the use of 
indefinite, undefined terms, which in turn reacted to still 
more distract aud obscure and vary the theor)^ This va- 
riation is so g-reat that in one sense or interpretation of 
the chief terms the theory is that of the crudest barbarian 
dreamer and in another sense or interpretation a logical 
conclusion of modern scientific induction, accepted even 
by such a positive physicist as Huxley, whom I will quote 
a little later in this chapter. 

§ 21. — VAKIOUS ASPECTS OF THK THEORY. 

Perhaps the crudest and simplest form of the theory of 
re-incarnation is that in which the "soul "is conceived of 
as a kind of being- of extremely fine or rarified matter 
which inhabits a body of a "coarser" kind of matter as 
its "earthly house or tabernacle," for the purposes of ob- 



RE-INCARNATION, Etc, 35 

taining" experience, discipline, education and develop- 
ment, so as to prepare the soul for existence in some sort 
of hig^her sphere in another world; and that to gain ade- 
quate qualifications for life in such higher sphere it is 
necessary that the soul pass through a long series of car- 
nations or fleshly embodiments. To this end a soul may 
pass an earthly life in a low animal or even plant, be re- 
incarnated or " born again" at the death of the body into 
another body, perhaps animal or human, and so repeated 
and continued for thousands of years, until the soul has 
been thoroughly disciplined and prepared for promotion 
to a "higher sphere" of existence. 

§ 22. — ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE. 

As to the origin of the notion of transmigration and 
re-incarnation, we have nothing of a historical nature, 
and the very earliest writings and inscriptions of the 
misty past indicate that a large proportion of mankind 
have from prehistoric time believed in some kind of re- 
incarnation. Though a doctrine of Buddhism, it was not 
originated by Buddha, but accepted as an unquestiona- 
ble, established part of human knowledge. And though 
the early Christians believed in the doctrine, it is not set 
forth in the New Testament as a new revelation of either 
Jesus or Paul or any of the other apostles, but there is evi- 
dence, granting that the N. T. records are trustworthy, 
that both Jesus and Paul accepted the doctrine as one 
that was so firmly established that no one even thought 
of calling it in question or of defending it. See Matt. 
xi:7-14 and xvii:10-13. 

And the Jews previous to the Christian era believed in 
re-incarnation according to a number of incidental refer- 
ences to it in the Old Testament, though it must have 



36 A FUTURE LIFE? 

been considered of little importance. Remnants of this 
Jewish and early Christian belief come down to the pres- 
ent, the doctrine itself being- "re-incarnated" in the pro- 
fessions of Dowie, Schlatter, Pig-g-ott and others claiming- 
to be re-incarnations of Elijah, Jesus, John the Baptist, 
etc. Aside from Christianity, many modern metaphysi- 
cians and mystics profess belief in some form of the doc- 
trine, but the Theosophists are the chief propagandists 
of the doctrine, as a necessar}^ accompaniment and essen- 
tial condition of "Karma." 

§ 23. — THK THBOSOPHIC VIEW. 

As I understand the Theosophical theory of re-incar- 
nation the belief is that the human never retrog-rades to 
the plane of the plant or the brute in any of its incarna- 
tions, basing- this opinion on the rather sandy foundation 
of a radical difference between the brute and the man in 
that Manas, the thinker and immortal person, has come 
upon an entirely separate and distinct plane of being — a 
difference in kind rather than in degfree. Hence Theoso- 
phists are not, technicall3% transmigrationists but strictly 
re-incarnationists, though in the Orient, the birhplace of 
the cult, the belief in brute and even plant re-embodi- 
ment of the human after death is and for ages has been 
quite extensive. 

Another feature of the theor}^ is: That re-incarnation 
is a ladder of prog-ress upon which the entire material uni- 
verse is climbing- step by step, in the course of innumera- 
ble ages, to a state of perfection and such an adjustment 
of the process as a whole as shall justify ever)^ apparent 
wrong- as being rig-ht as means to a good end under natu- 
ral law. During- the interval between death and a subse- 
quent re-incarnation "the higfher triad, Manas, Buddhi^ 



RE-INCARNATION, Etc, 37 

and A/ma, who are the real man, g-o into another state," 
sa3^s Wm. Q. Judg-e, an authoritative theosophical writer, 
in his book entitled T/ie Ocean of Theosophy, "which is 
called Devachan or heaven," and when that interval "is 
over they are attracted back to earth for re-incarnation." 

Considering- the acknowledged fact that there is little 
(really no) conscious memory of any pre-existence in any 
of the incarnations or the intervals in "heaven;" and so 
practically if not actually there is no continuity of the 
personality; and therefore there is no self-interest in the 
anticipated future heaven or earth existences, and the 
much-lauded Karma is of no individual or personal inter- 
est however much it ma}" contribute to race or universal 
progress. What one wishes to know is whether he shall 
continue, or awake, after death the same person with re- 
membrance and recognition of friends and relatives. 

A "hope of heaven " which carries with it a certainty 
that John Smith shall there have no remembrance of his 
earth life, of his dear Mrs. Smith or of any of the dear 
little Smiths, or even of himself as John Smith of earth- 
life — no recog-nition of them or of himself "over there," 
is not a very joyous hope. Add to that the expectation 
that the life in heaven is to end, sometime, with a return 
to earth to re-incarnate and live as Bill Jones in this "vale 
of tears," and the "hope" is reduced to indifference. 

It ma)" be replied to this that sometime, when the aeons 
of ag"es necessary for man to reach perfection have ended, 
we shall "be as gods," yet the vast extent of this pre- 
parator}" period affords not cheering hope, but appalling 
disma}^ But I am aware that such dismal prospect does 
not disprove the theory of re-incarnation ; yet it certainl}" 
weighs heavily ag^ainst the reasonableness and benefi- 



38 A FUTURE LIFE? 

cence of the scheme. One of the main "supports" of the 
doctrine being" that it is necessary in order to justify the 
ending" of human earth-life so much short of the realiza- 
tion of human aspirations and capabilities, this objection 
is certainly relevant as at least against the pobability of 
the correctness of the theory. 

§ 24. — "supports" of thk theosophic theory. 

But what evidence have Theosophists that their com- 
plex and pretentious scheme of re-incarnation is true to 
nature? It has no support as induction from facts of ob- 
servation or experience, but the "supports" its believers 
rely upon are defective deductions and analogies. I will 
here summarize concisely what Mr. Judge sets forth in 
his Ocean of Theosoi>hy^ quite fully, as "supporting" the 
doctrine of re-incarnation as a cardinal principle of The- 
osophy. The author devotes a chapter to the discussion 
of the following "arguments" on which the theosophic 
theory of re-incarnation are based : 

The nature of the soul (see § 20, this chapter); the laws 
of mind and soul; differences in character; necessity for 
discipline and evolution; differences in capacity and start 
in life at the cradle; individual identity proves it; the 
probable object of life makes it necessary; one life is not 
enough to carry out Nature's purposes. (This assuming 
to know what "nature's purposes" are is like that of the 
priest who tells us all about "God's purposes" !) Mere 
death confers no advance ; a school after death is illog- 
ical; the persistence of savagery and decay of nations 
g"ive support to it; the appearance of geniuses is due to 
it (which is a plain case of begging: the question); inhe- 
herent ideas common to man show it. 

There is no proof in any of these propositions; they 



RK-INCARNATION, Etc. 39 

simply pertain to matters which the h3^pothesis of re-in- 
carnation has been adapted to explain. 

§ 25. — A SKLF-DKFEATING SCHEME. 

Mr. Judgfe says: "Individuals and nations in definite 
streams return in regfularly recurring- periods [cycles] to 
the earth, and thus bring* back to the g"lobe the arts, the civ- 
ilization, the very persons who once were on it at work." 
If that is true, how can there be the prog-ress in the arts, 
civilization and personality which Mr. Judge says is the 
object of re-incarnation? The old truism, "A stream can 
rise no higher than its source," is pertinent here. Such a 
scheme of re-incarnations would defeat its own purposes. 

§ 26. — A NON-CONSOLING HOPE — A FRIGID HEAVEN. 

According to the theosophic theory human kinship is 
of the material body onh^; the soul is parentless, and the 
bod)^ being mortal, parent and child "cannot meet and 
recognize each other after death, as their souls are not 
so related." Hope of such a future life is barren of about 
all that makes "hope of heaven" a sweet consolation. 

§ 27. — BUDDHISM AND RE-INCARNATION. 

According- to the very ancient Indian belief in re-incar- 
nation the continuit)^ of life is not broken at death, but 
the life proeeds from death to re-birth and agfain to death 
and re-birth in constant alternation until the final disso- 
lution of the universe after a kalfa of aeons of ages. 

Buddha did not originate, but somewhat modified this 
doctrine. The births of Buddha himself are usually num- 
bered at 550, of which the later are called the gfreat births. 
Prof. Waddell, in his large work, The Buddhism of Tibet, 
says of Karma : "It explains all the acts and events of 
one's life as the results of deeds done in previous exist- 
ences, and it creates a system of rewards and punishments. 



40 A FUTURE LIFE? 

sinking- the wicked through the lower stages of human 
and animal existence, and even to hell, and lifting the 
g-ood to the level of might)^ kings, and even to the gods." 

§ 28. — A RKAL, SCIENTIFIC RK-INCARNATION. 

Notwithstanding that all of the theories of re-incar- 
nation to which the term is usually applied are esoteric 
and metaphysical, there is a really scientific aspect of the 
subject, dependant upon a somewhat different use and 
interpretation of terms. And it is possible, if not proba- 
ble, that the various mystical and misty views are reall}^ 
dim or grotesque views (more or less warped by sentiment 
and obscured by superstition) of the reality. In biologic 
science, the term heredity is used and definitely applies 
to all of re-incarnation that is real and scientific. The 
scientific aspect was well presented by Huxley in his lec- 
ture on Evolution and Ethics^ from which I quote. 

§ 29. — HUXI.KY ON THE REALITY. 

"Everyday experience familiarizes us with the facts 
which are grouped under the name of heredity. Every- 
one of us bears upon him obvious marks of his parentage, 
perhaps of remoter relationships. More particularly the 
sum of tendencies to act in a certain way, which we call 
'character,' is often to be traced through a long series of 
progenitors and collaterals. So we may justly say that 
this 'character' — this moral and intellectual essence of a 
a man does veritably f ass over from one fleshly tabernacle to 
another, and does really transmigrate\,ox re-incarnate] from 
generation to generation. In the new-born infant the 
character of the stock lies latent, and the ego is little more 
than a bundle of potentialities; but, very earl)% these be- 
come actualities : from childhood to age they manifest 
themselves in dullness or brightness, in weakness or 
strength, viciousness or uprightness: and with each fea- 



RE-INCARNATION, Etc. 41 

ture modified by confluence with another character, if by 
nothing" else, the character passes on to its re-incarnation 
in new bodies. The Indian philosophers called this char- 
acter Karma. It is this Karma which passed from life 
to life and linked them in a chain of transmigrations; 
and they held that it is modified in each life, not merely 
by confluence of parentage, but b}^ its own acts." 

Thus we see that the ancient belief in re-incarnation 
was based upon a sort of primitive hazy fore-view and 
conception of the great modern scientific theory of evo- 
lution, which inductive reasoning has developed. 



CHAPTER IV. 

SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESES. 

§ 30. — TERMS DHFINKD. 

WHAT do you understand by the word spiritistic? 
Different persons would reply with different 
answers to this question, and none, perhaps, would be 
in exact accord with what I shall herein use the word to 
mean. In order, then, that the ideas which I intend to 
convey shall be received in their integ^rity by every one 
of my readers, I will briefly give my definition and ask 
them to accept it as their own while reading* this discus- 
sion; this may forestall criticism that is mere play upon 
words, and also prevent confusion of ideas. 

I herein use the word spiritistic not as a synonym of 
spiritualistic, nor as exclusively relating to the theories 
or phenomena of modern Spiritualism, but as expressing* 
a broader, more comprehensive meaning. I mean by the 
terms Spiritistic Hypotheses of a Future Life all doctrines 
of a continued or renewed conscious life after death of 
the body which are based upon the g^eneral hypothesis 
that the material body actually dies and disintegrates 
and is never resurrected, but that an immaterial being- or 
organism closely corresponding in parts and in whole to 
the material body it is supposed to have "inhabited,*' es- 
capes and lives forever in a new state of existence. This 
embraces not only the beliefs of the Spiritualists, but a 
larg-e and increasing number of the more intelligent and 
educated Christians and Deists. 

The major premise of this doctrine is that man in this 



SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESES. 43 

life is a dual (some say a triune) being-, body and spirit, 
or soul; the minor premise is that, thoug-h the body dies, 
the spirit is essentially immortal, and thoug-h the body 
is useful to it for awhile, it can and does ultimately live 
independently of any material counterpart or bod)^ Ad- 
mit the truth of these premises and the conclusion is log:- 
ical that there is a future life for at least one component 
of the human duad or triad. But, are they, or either of 
them, true? Are they self-evident facts or inductively 
ascertained principles? As to the first half of the latter 
question, I will say that to a critical and scientific mind 
*'self-evident " truths are exceedingly rare; in fact, to me 
there appears to be but two self-evident truths. One is, 
I am^ the other is. It is : the /and the not I—mQ and my 
environment exist. All other truths must rest primarily 
upon these two, and secondarily upon other and collateral 
facts, as the keystone of an arch is supported by the other 
stones of the arch and all by the two bottom stones, one 
at the base of each half of the arch. I will, then, paSs 
as irrelevant the "self-evident" argument and proceed to 
discuss the alleg-ed scientific proofs of the dual nature of 
man and the indestructibility of the spirit element. 

§31. — IS MAN A DUAD? 

Though many spiritists assert that man i&a triad, cort- 
sisting- of body, soul and spirit, I shall not here discuss 
the question of a difference between soul and spirit, or 
between the spirit and the *' spiritual body," as spiritists 
believe both survive the death of the body. I will con- 
sider them togfether as one, for the arg-uments for the ex- 
istence of both are the same. That there is a material 
human body, all admit — even the Christian Scientist ad- 
mits it in -practice^ thougfh he denies it in theo7'y. The 



44 A FUTURE LIFE? 

question, then, is narrowed down to this: Is there a spirit 
in the living- body? Spiritists declare there is. Let us 
examine the g-rounds of their belief. 

There are three distinct reasons given for believing in 
the existence of a spirit entity in the living body. 1. It 
is revealed in the Bible; 2. The belief is universal; 3. It 
is necessary to account for freedom of volition and the 
power of initiating motion, thought etc. 

§32. — RKVKI,ATION AS EVIDKNCH. 

To many people the testimony of the biblical writers 
is acceptible as conclusive proof; to some it is of little 
or no use as evidence. But whether the Bible is a mes- 
sage from Omniscience or is the work of finite, ignorant, 
semi-barbaric men, its testimony is worthless if it is in- 
consistent or self-contradictory. A few quotations will be 
enough to satisfy any rational person that the testimony 
of the Bible is ambigruous, inconsistent and self-contra- 
dictory. In fact it is impossible to quote much from the 
Bible on this subject for it does not contain much, and 
that little i^, for the most part, merely incidental remark. 
The first mention of spirit is in Gen. i:2.: "And darkness 
was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of Elohim 
('.God) moved upon the face of the waters." But strictly 
speaking, this does not refer to a spirit beingf, I think, 
but to winds considered as the breath of the gods. In the 
Jehovistic cosmogony it is said (Gen. ii:7), ''the Lord 
God .... breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and 
man became a living soul." Here again the spirit of the 
Lord of the gods, or of "the god Jahveh," is represented 
not as a personality, but as his breath ; and that breath 
naturally entered into Adam by way of his nostrils and 
caused him to become "a living" soul." If a spirit medium 



SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESES. 45 

were to announce that a spirit had entered into her bod_v 
throug-h her nose the Christian scoffer would consider it 
to be an exceedingfl)- ludicrous explanation, but he will 
read this stor}- of the spirit of a jjfod entering* Adam's body 
throug-h his nose as a dig*nified recital of "solemn truth ! " 
'Twould be blasphem}^ to laugfh at that ! 

Eliphaz speaks of seeing a spirit (Job iv:15) but doesn't 
say that it was that of a man. It must have been a con- 
ventional "g-host," for it appeared to him "in the night, 
when deep sleep falleth on men," and he was so frigfht- 
ened that, he says, it made him tremble and his bones to 
shake and the hair of his flesh stand up — just as it does 
with ever^'one Tthey say) who sees a ghost I But g"host 
stories are at a discount in these days of iconoclastic sci- 
ence, and I am inclined to think that poor Job's friend 
Eliphaz was a little over-zealous and so resorted to some 
highly poetical embellishment of his addresses as coun- 
sellor and advocate of Jahveh. But Job himself seems to 
have believed that man "has a spirit or soul,*' for he com- 
plains, he says, (ch. vii:ll),"in the bitterness of m)" soul" 
and "I will speak in the anguish of my spirit." But this 
is far from a positive declaration that his spirit and his 
soul were personal beingfs and not merely the emotional 
elements of his mind. In other places Job speaks of his 
soul, but always as one speaking" of the emotional ele- 
ment of his mind. 

I think it is quite evident from expressions of Job that 
he did not believe in any survival of the spirit after death. 
In fact he speaks as thoug-h it was "self-evident" that 
"as the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away, so he that 
gfoeth down to the g-rave shall come up no more" (vii:9), 
either in body or spirit, for he says "man dieth and wast- 
eth away : yea, man gfiveth up the g-host [breath], and 



46 A FUTURE LIFE? 

where is he?" And that famous question, almost univer- 
sally misapprehended, *'If a man die, shall he live ag'ain?" 
is asked, not as seeking- information, but as a question so 
palpably absurd as to afford its own answer — as much as 
to say that if he could die he should be forever free from 
his "angfuish of spirit" and "bitterness of soul." (See 
ch. xiv. V. 14, and contexts; also, x:20-21 and xiv:12.) 

But other "inspired writers" seem to contradict Job 
and affirm, thoug"h indirectly, that there is a spirit being" 
in the human body that does not die with the body but 
passes out of it and continues to live independently. For 
instance, read iKings xvii:l7-23, where Elijah persuaded 
Jahveh, in the case of a dead child, to "let this child's 
soul come into hira again," "and the soul of the child 
came into him again, and he revived." See the story of 
the witch of En-dor (1 Sam. xxviii:7-15), wherein it is told 
that the spirit of Samuel, who was dead, communicated, 
exactly in the manner of modern Spiritualism through the 
woman as a medium, with Saul. In this case, however, 
we may infer that the spirit habitually rested quietly in 
the grave with the dead body, as it is told that Saul said 
to the woman, "bring- me up Samuel," and the woman 
having done so, said she saw "g-ods [daemons or spirits] 
ascending: out of the earth;" and Samuel reproached Saul, 
saying": "Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?" 
In a number of places in both the Old and the New Tes- 
taments the word ang-el, and even Lord, is evidently used 
to mean a daemon or disembodied spirit. 

Taking" the Hebrew writings of the Bible in g-eneral we 
find that there is little in them that declares or indicates 
any well-defined doctrine of a future life of any kind, but 
there are some very positive statements that "death ends 



SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESES. 47 

all." In addition to the above quotations from Job I will 
make a few from Solomon, who bein^ reputed the wisest 
man that ever lived, should be the best of authority. 

After saying- of the sons of men that "they themselves 
iare beasts," Solomon continues (Eccl. iii:19): "For that 
which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even 
one thing" befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the 
other; yea, they have all one breath [or spirit] ; so that 
a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast. . . All go unto 
one place; all are of the dust, and all return to dust again. 
Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and 
the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth? " 
This reference to the going up or down of the "spirit" of 
man and beast plainly shows that this spirit was literall}^ 
their breath. If not, then Solomon believed that beasts 
as well as men have spirits ! 

"It is better to go to the house of mourning than to g"0 
to the house of feasting; for that is the end of all men," 
Eccl. vii:2. "There is no man that hath power over the 
spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power [to do so] 
in the day of death." Gh. viii:8. Here again by spirit is 
meant the breath. "For a living dog is better than a 
dead lion. For the living know that they shall die; but 
the dead know not anything, neither have they any more 
a reward." ix:4-5. Solomon uses the word spirit in its 
sense of disposition or temper as well as for breath, as in 
Prov. xvi:18-19, which sa3^s: "Pride goeth before destruc- 
tion and a haughty spirit before a fall. Better it is to be 
of an humble spirit," etc., but nowhere does he positive- 
ly use it in the sense in which it is used by spiritists. 

David seems to have believed that the "soul" died with 
the body, or, at least, went into the grave with it. He 
exclaims: ''What man is he that liveth and shall not see 



48 A FUTURE LIFE? 

death? Shall he deliver his soul from thelhand of the 
grave?" Psalm lxxxix:48. 

But the Old Testament is of and for this world only, 
and to you who disagrees with me here I say, read it all 
carefull}^ througfh with the object of confirming 3^our be- 
lief in the existence of a spirit or soul in man that is des- 
tined to live as a person after the death of the body, and 
then tell me if you have not been disappointed and as- 
tonished to find so little grain in so large a field ! 

§ 33. — SPIRITISM OF THE NKW TESTAMENT. 

Many spiritists who are Christians admit that the He- 
brew Bible reveals little if anything respecting the ques- 
tions of the existence of a human soul or spirit having' 
ability to live independently of a material body after the 
death of the body, but say that Christ "brought life and 
immortality to lig-ht," and that the New Testament wri- 
ters, under inspiration, recorded and amplified his revela- 
tion. And it is true that the Christian's belief in spirit 
or soul and a future life is derived chiefly from that por- 
tion of the Bible; but I do not think the New Testament 
teaches what I have defined spiritism to be, b}^ direct as- 
sertion. It teaches not the doctrine that human souls or 
spirits are to live eternally in either heaven or hell with- 
out a "body" of some kind, but all of its writers, except 
Paul, teach the doctrine of the resurrection of the old body 
in which the spirit shall again actively live. Paul, be- 
ing- a man too well educated to accept the crude theory 
of the resurrection of the same body identically that was 
laid in the grave, presented a modification of the doctrine 
as set forth in his theory of a "spiritual body " raised 
from the dead "natural body" as a wheat stalk comes up 
from a grain that has been buried in the ground. (ICor. 



SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESES. 49 

xv:44). See the absurdity of this theory exposed in § 14, 
to § 18, inclusive, of this discussion. 

In 1 John iv:l-3 spirits are spoken of in a manner that 
leads some spiritists, especially the Spiritualists, to think 
the writer refers to spirit beings, whereas he speaks of 
the spirit — the disposition, the temper, the motive, man- 
ner — of certain persons who were teaching- religious doc- 
trines at that time, some of whom were suspicioned of 
being unorthodox or heretical. "Beloved, believe not ev- 
ery spirit, but tr}' the spirits whether they are of God ; be- 
cause many false prophets have gone out into the world." 
The writer here evidently refers to that vague thing that 
has been called "the spirit of prophecy." This is shown 
by expressions in the second and third verses, and by the 
general tenor of the chapter. 

This use of the word spirit is found also in 1 Tim. iv:l. 
Here it is said that "the Spirit" (whatever that may be) 
"speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall 
depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and 
doctrines of devils." Whether "the Spirit" here means the 
Holy Ghost, or that spirit of prophecy manifested in the 
frenzy and delirium of religious excitement, or something 
else, it certainly does not mean a human personality; nei- 
ther does the "seducing spirits" spoken of mean spirits 
of the dead, nor the personality of the living, but living 
people of a certain disposition or spirit ; and even if the 
seducing spirits and devils were understood to be imma- 
terial beings or personalities, we have no assurance that 
they were supposed to be survivals from dead human bod- 
ies. The succeeding remarks, in verses 2 and 3, plainly 
show that heretical people in this life were meant. 

And yet, the New Testament writers do reflect here 



^0 A FUTURE LIFE? 

and there the pagfan belief of the Bg'yptians and Romans 
in daemons; that is, disembodied spirits. But that belief 
carried with it the belief that such spirits or daemons 
were in a place of waiting" — a sort of dormant or semi- 
sleeping* state — awaiting the appointed time when they 
vShould re-enter their resurrected bodies, and that belief 
is not what I defined the word spiritism to mean. This 
is really the doctrine of the resurrection, which I treated 
of in the second paper of this series. I find no positive as- 
sertion by any New Testament writer that man "has" or 
is a spirit or soul destined to live forever independently 
of the body, as believed by Spiritualists, Unitarians, Lib- 
eral Christians, deists, and even some atheists. 

§ 34. — WOKTHLESS AS KVIDKNCE. 

These references to and quotations of the biblical wri- 
tings, Old and New, are not made because I think they 
are authoritative, inspired or reliable as evidence as to 
the question of embodied or disembodied spirit here or 
in the hereafter, but because others do think so and rest 
their belief, in the existence of an immortal personality 
in the living* bod)^ that continues conscious existence af- 
ter bodily death, upon the Bible. To me they are, as evi- 
dence either for or ag-ainst, as the air-castles of oriental 
dreamers, far-fetched analogies of crude metaphysicians, 
the imag-ery of poetr}^ — the "baseless fabric of a dream." 
The only evidence of this being- true of these biblical ref- 
erences to this question that I deem necessary to mention 
here is the hazy, contradictory, ambiguous and allegori- 
cal character of the writing's themselves. 

§ 35. — UNIVERSALITY OF THE BELIEF. 

Many people are g-reatly influenced in forming- their 
opinions and adopting- their creeds by "they say." And 



SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESES. 51 

of all the foundations upon which to build a consistent, 
rational and truthful belief "they sa}^" is the most unsub- 
stantial and untrustworthy. No matter how vast a num- 
ber of people are represented b)^ "the3%" their testimony 
is unreliable if not consistent with truth obtained by sci- 
entific observation, experimentation and induction. No, 
it may be laid down as an axiomatic truth that, as a g"en- 
eral rule, the greater the number of people who hold to 
a belief the less trustworthy is their testimony, especially 
if that belief is of ancient orig-in. This is because a larg^e 
majority of mankind always have been and are 3^et really 
uncritical observers, illog^ical reasoners, lovers of mys- 
ter3%of excessive credulit}^ and suofgfestibility; and also be- 
cause largely imitative and exceedingfU^ desirous of secur- 
ing- the approbation of large numbers of their fellow-men. 
Rather than suffer popular disapproval the}" will close 
their eyes to facts they fear might prove the erroneous- 
ness of the beliefs they know to be popular. 

All the inhabitants of earth once believed it to be flat 
and stationary, and that the heavens daily passed over it 
from east to west; and today a large proportion of the hu- 
man race think the}" are sure of it. For ages all men be- 
lieved the sky to be a solid, arched roof of the world and 
almost within their reach. Millions have believed some 
people could change themselves into wolves or other ani- 
mals. Millions have believed that Mohammed was the 
prophet of God and millions still believe it; and their be- 
lief in silly stories about him is implicit and as unreason- 
able as the belief of millions of Christians in the impos- 
sible miracles of the Bible record. The logical inference 
to be drawn from this is that the belief of large numbers 
in anything is no evidence whatever that it represents 
truth, but rather the contrary. 



52 A FUTURE LIFE? 

I readily admit that a very great number of the race, 
in the past up to the present, have believed in spirits in 
and out of material bodies, and even that disembodied 
spirits will live forever without re-embodiment. But 
I cannot admit that such belief is or ever has been "uni- 
versal," or even nearly so. 

My contention (supported by facts, I think,) is that 
the belief of larg-e numbers, or even all men, is no evi- 
dence either for or agfainst the spiritistic hypotheses. 



CHAPTER V. 

SPIRITISM AS A \N^ORKING HYPOTHESIS. 

§36. — IS THE SPIRITISTIC HYHOTHESIS NECESSARY? 

IT IS thought b}' some people, even some who are of 
a scientific bent of mind and education, that certain 
psycholog^ical phenomena are inexplainable except upon 
the h3^pothesis that there is in man a "spirit," a dens ex 
machina — a of kind uncaused cause which can initiate ac- 
tion ; that is, like Elohim of old, it can create something- 
out of nothing". 

The greatest of these phenomena that are supposed to 
reflexivel^v prove that in man there is a spirit entity that 
is a sort of finite microcosmic ''first cause," analagous to 
and " made in the image of " that assumed infinite macro- 
cosmic "Great First Cause," is that of freedom of the 
will. Some, to maintain the proper dig-nity of man and 
keep him in his place at the head of the procession of all 
living things, assume that brutes — "the lower animals" 
have no spirits, all their activities being- effected by the 
"vital forces" under natural law. But man, the pet and 
"spoiled child "of the Creator, is an exception — enjoys 
more or less exemption from control by natural law. He 
can do things without natural cause — just because he 
wants to — and can even do thing's he don't want to do, 
to demonstrate the independence and freedom of his will ! 
Like the boy who when asked why he did thus and so, 
"short-circuits " his answer by replying-, " Jist 'cause uh 
wanted tuh." But others, especially of late, assume that 

(53) 



54 A FUTURE LIFE? 

animals as well as men have souls, and enjoy to some ex- 
tent freedom of will. 

This arg-ument that the existence of a human spirit is 
proved because it is necessary to account for freedom of 
will appears to me much like saying that there must be 
a ladder reaching from the earth to the moon, for in no 
other way can we account for "the man in the moon ! " 
That is to say, it is not necessary to adopt a hypothesis 
to account for that which does not exist. Before we try 
to account for freedom of the will, we should know that 
freedom of will is a fact. Whatever other evidence there 
may be of the existence of a human spirit, this appeal to 
the common illusion of free will is fruitless. 

§ 37. — DETERMINISM. 

The subjective feeling of man that he is not wholly 
subject to the ordinary laws of nature — the invariable re- 
lationship of cause to effect — is extremely persistent, and 
the feeling of self-importance is so intense that we rebel 
instantly against the accusation that we are not absolute- 
ly free and independent egos. But a close, critical and 
strictly objective view will convince those capable of in- 
ductive reasoning that man's will is determined by nat- 
ural causes, hereditary and environmental. 

To illustrate what I mean, I will liken the life of man 
to a river. We all recognize the similarity, but generally 
without making any close and critical comparison ; we 
personify the rivulet or the river as a living thing "wend- 
ing its devious way" from its birth at the mountain spring 
to its extinction in the ocean's surf and diffusion in the 
g-reat emblem of eternity, the ocean ; we speak of our own 
life as a stream, and the expression, "river of life," has 
come down to us with the history of the race from the 



SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESES. 55 

*' ancient of days." Thougfh these are poetic similes, they 
are at bottom scientific analogfies. 

Yet, in spite of our recognition of this analog-y, we do 
not ascribe freedom of will to the river, but we realize 
that just three thing's determine its every movement and 
its course from the spring to the sea. These three things 
are: 1. Temperature, causing fluidit}^ of the water; 2. 
Gravity, causing the water to move "down hill;" 3. The 
River-bed, bottom and shores, causing the water to con- 
tinue near, without dispersing over, the earth's surface, 
and restricting the velocity and course of the water. 

In a human life we find just three fundamental factors 
that deternihie man's every act and his course from birth 
to death: 1. The physio-chemical so-called "forces," 
causing integration and disintegration — growth and de- 
cay of tissues; 2. Heredity, causing the tendency of the 
progen}^ to exactly ref) eat the life of the progenitor; 3. 
Varying Environment— concurrent circumstances of life — 
modifying the effects of heredity and forming new fac- 
tors of the inheritance of the progeny, thus almost infi- 
nitely multiplying concurring and conflicting elements 
of heredity as the life of the race extends. Every move- 
ment, every pain and every pleasure, every thought, every 
emotion, every sentiment, every choice, ever}" virtue and 
every vice, every good deed and every crime — absolutely 
alloi life — all of the phenomena of human life are amply 
provided for without the slightest intervention of a "free 
will," and they are scientifically accounted for as effects 
of those three fundamental causes without recourse to 
the spiritistic hypothesis. The true scientist never re- 
sorts to hypotheses to explain phenomena which are 
accounted for by ascertained facts and well-stablished 



56 A FUTURE LIFE? 

principles. The objector may say, "I can, by the act of 
my free will, choose to reject bread and eat arsenic, or I 
can deliberately place my hand in a fire; though my ap- 
petite demand food, T can refrain from eating", etc. "I 

I reply : You can do these things, certainly, but only 
as compelled by your environment to do so. If you per- 
form these apparently irregular acts merely to convince 
me that you can choose to do so, remember that the cir- 
cumstances of our difference of opinion and your desire 
to convince me that I am wrong and you are right con- 
stitute the over-balancing elements of your environment 
which determines your will — compels you to thus act op- 
positely to what you would otherwise have done. As the 
banks of the river determine the direction of its flow, so 
the environment of the man determ'nes the direction of 
his actions^his will. 

Two bright boys, John and James, schoolmates and 
devoted chums, decide to join a polar expedition. They 
agree to stand by each other in all their dangers and de- 
privations; would be really and truly brothers. They go, 
and at length they find themselves prisoners in the ice 
and starving to death. James dies; John has had nothing 
to eat for many days. His desire for food is overwhelm- 
ing; sentiment is dead — he eats the flesh of his once dear 
friend. Was his will free? The new environment deter- 
mined his will to do what in his former environment he 
would not have believed he could by any power be com- 
pelled to do; but environment is the lord of the trinity of 
the "Almighty" — Physio-chemical Action, Heredity and 
Environment. 

It has been objected to determinism that, if true, efforts 
to reform the criminal by either education or penalty are 



SPIRITISM AS A WORKING HYPOTHESIS. 57 

useless, as the '* fate " of everyone is beyond volitional 
control ; but the exact opposite is true. By chang-ing- 
the environment of the criminal his will may be deter- 
mined against criminal action and for right action. The 
** reformer's" will to provide this new environment is not 
spontaneous or "free," but is itself determined by ^/5 or- 
ganization, heredity and environment, so that the crimi- 
nal and the reformer alike fulfill the great law of nature: 
Every cause is itself an effect, and every effect a cause. 

One curious phase of the belief in freedom of the will 
is that while we are deluded into a belief in it, in practice 
we to a great extent ignore it. Every time one asks an- 
other, "Why did you do so?" he really asks, "What was 
the circumstance — the thing in your environment — that 
determined j^our will to do so ? " That is, he recognizes 
the fact that the will to do was not spontaneous but caused 
by something in the circumstances of the one who willed 
to do. Every detectiv^e and every criminal court recog- 
nizes the fact that there is a motive for every crime, and 
when a motive is found it weighs heavily as evidence in 
the case. We are forced in spite of our creed to acknowl- 
edge in practical affairs that the will is determined by 
natural.causes; that it is an effect of cause and not an un- 
caused cause, and no spirit entity is needed to "create" 
decisions of the will. 

I will here quote what has been said on this question 
by one of the world's deservedly best-known biologists, 
Professor Ernst Haeckel, of the University of Jena (Ger- 
many). In the 18th Thesis of his address on the Organiz- 
ation of Monism* (pag-e 8), he says : 



* A Universal Monistic Alliance. By Ernst Haeckel. 
The famous "Thirty Theses," published by The Rkvikw 
office, 852 E. Lee st., Los Angeles, Cal. Price 6 cents. 



58 A FUTURE LIFE? 

In the same manner as all other functions of the brain 
— sensation, imag^ination, reasoning" — the will of man is 
a physiolog'ical function of the nervous central org-an and 
determined by the anatomical structure of the same. The 
special personal qualities of the brain, which are partly 
g"iven throug'h heredity from ancestors and partly ac- 
quired throug-h accommodation [to environment] in indi- 
vidual life, with necessity determine the will. The old 
dogma of a free will, indeterminisra, therefore appears to 
be absurd and must be replaced by determinism. 

Let me g-ive a note of caution : By heredity I do not 
mean the transniission of traits merely from the parents, 
but from all oi one's progenitors back to the first living- 
cell — the earlier influence constantly being" modified by 
that of later environment and the duality of parentage. 

§ 38. —IS SPIRIT NECESSARY TO INITIATE MOTION ? 

Another well-nigh universal illusion is that of the be- 
gfinning" and ending of motion — that a living being can 
initiate motion — create motion out of inertia, as matter is 
by some believed to have been created out of nothing" by 
living" gods — Klohim of the Hebrews. Even some who 
are reputed scientists today seem to. ascribe this miracu- 
lous performance to "spirit," or to " force," which is 
but a substitute for spirit and just as illusory and unreal. 
But it is a superficial view of nature that leads one to be- 
lieve that motion is ever created or ever annihilated. 

Up to comparatively recent years men believed that 
matter could be and had been created, and that it could 
be and was daily being" annihilated. The old notion of 
the prophesied destruction of the world by fire at "the 
last day" was, that in being entirel}^ "burned up "it 
would be completely blotted out of existence — reduced to 
nothingness. But when alchemy g"ave place to chemistry 
the g-reat truths like a blazingf sun just rising", burst upon 



SPIRITISM AS A WORKING HYPOTHESIS. 59 

the vision of the pioneers of modern^cience, and one of the 
most alert of them, Lavoisier, saw it first and announced 
the gfreat natural law and fundamental principle of sci- 
ence, the Constancy of Matter — its uncreatability and its 
indestructibility. Then came another student of nature, 
Robert Mayer, and announced the great law of the Con- 
stancy or Conservation of Energfy — its uncreatability and 
indestructibility. Then came Haeckel with a still g-reater 
generalization and announced the truth that these laws 
were one and inseparable, and named the one great law 
the Law of Substance. (See Riddle of the Universe.^ 

Even great intellects seldom grasp a new great truth 
clearly and wholly at once. The men above named were 
discoverers, but they never discovered all of truth — not 
even all of the great truths which they gave to the scien- 
tific world. The ghost of the old dualism stood between 
them and the reality and obscured their vision. They 
laid the ghost under the name of ''spirit," but reinstated 
it under the names of "force" and "energy." They could 
not rid themselves of the ancient fallacy that there was 
an immaterial entity "within or back of matter" that 
caused its motions. Even the great Haeckel, the "first 
apostle " of what he calls Scientific Monism, is apparently 
not wholly free from the great dualistic delusion. Note 
this from his 19th Thesis : "In our modern science, the 
idea 'God' can be determined only so far as we see in 
* God ' the last [i. e., ultimate, usually called the " first" ] 
indiscernible cause of all things, the ' unconscious hypo- 
thetical ^ original cause of substance.'" To my miud, the 
admission that there is substance and an original cause K^i 
substance, is dualism and not monism. An "original 
cause" is one which originates, and must have existed 
prior to that which it originated, and so is distinct from 



60 A FUTURE LIFE? 

and independent of it — exactly what dualistic theologfists 
believe. True, Haeckel says his "God" is an '* uncon- 
scious hypothetical orig-inal cause,*' but the theolog-ical 
*'God" is also hypothetical and may be unconscious for 
all that anybody knows about it (or ''him"). In either 
case the material universe is one thing* and an '* origfinal 
cause" of it is another, making- two things, which is the 
essence of dualism. Again : the Professor says in his 
20th Thesis, "We consider matter and power Cor 'matter 
and energy' — body <3;//<^ spirit) the inseparable attributes 
of substance (Spinoza)." In this statement he fairly en- 
dorses the essential postulate of spit^itism when he g-ives 
the terms " body and spirit " as equivalent to the terms 
matter and energy. The difference between Haeckel's 
"spirit" and the spirit of the spiritists is that his is sup- 
posed to be impersonal and unconscious, while theirs is 
supposed to be personal and conscious; both are supposed 
to be "immortal," for the law of substance secures eter- 
nal existence for Haeckel's "energy=spirit." But the 
good Professor is very near the reality, as appears to me. 
One more forward step, and he will find real monism. 

§ 39. — THK I. AW OF UNITY. 

In reality Mayer's law of the constancy or conservation 
of energy is but a partial expression of the law of the 
Constancy of Matter, and the terminology of the formula 
is defective and misleading, for it implies the existence of 
an immaterial entity " within and back of matter" as the 
cause of its movements — the phenomena of nature, when 
in reality there is no such entity. Nothing is needed as 
an "original cause " of motion, for motion cannot be ori- 
g-inated or initiated any more than can matter. Substi- 
tute the word motion for "energ'y "in Mayer's expression 



SPIRITISM AS A WORKING HYPOTHESIS. 61 

of the law and we have a true scientific principle, thoug"h 
only one subordinate to the more complete gfeneralization 
known as the law of Constancy of Matter. It should read, 
**the Constancy or Conservation of Motion"; or, as I 
prefer, The Uncreatahility and Indestructihility of Motion. 
That is, motion is never initiated or annihilated. 

Substitute the word form (shape) for ''energy," and 
we have another law subordinate to the law of Constancy 
of Matter. Form, no more than motion, is ever initiated 
or annihilated. Forms, like motions, are correlated, and 
the g-reat Law of Correlation applies to both Motion and 
Form, but to ''spirit" and "force "it cannot apply, be- 
cause they are " air}^ nothings." 

The Law of Unit}^ is this : Form and Motion are Insep- 
arable Attributes of Matter ; there is no matter without 
form and motion, and no form or motion without matter ; 
hence the law of the Constancy of Matter comprehends 
the subordinate laws above mentioned. I would substi- 
tute forHaeckel's "substance" the word iuatter^ because 
that word applies to matter in motion, which is all the 
Professor's word "substance" in reality implies, while it 
seems to imply that something else, "energy," plus mat- 
ter equals " substance;" and for his "Law of Substance" 
I would substitute, The Law of the Uncreatabiltty and 
Indestructibility of Matter — which includes motion, for 
it is a constant attribute of matter — an essential oi it — 
"inertia," like "force" and "energy" entities, being an 
illusion. The "one step more" suggested above is that 
of affirming matter in motion, not a "force" entity and 
matter, to be the causative basis or "sub-stance" of all the 
phenomena of nature — chemical, mechanical, physiolog- 
ical, intellectual, emotional and moral — a truly scientific 
monism, instead of a mere change of terms. 



62 A FUTURE LIFE? 

This theory, I believe I was the first person to enun- 
ciate, which I did in 1904. So far as I know, no scientist 
or other person has ever positively denied the existence 
of force and energ-y, af&rmed the impossibility of either 
initiating- or annihilating-, or in way increasing or dimin- 
ishing the totality of motion in nature, and affirmed that 
"the cause of motion is not force, but motion^'''' fhat is, the 
modes of motion by their correlation are sequences of one 
another. Prof. Gore, of Manchester, Eng-., has come 
nearer to it than any other author that I have read. 

If any reader of this can direct me to any published 
statement of this view which antedates mine of 1904, or 
even this of September, 1906, 1 shall be grateful to him if 
he will kindly do so. 

§ 40. — SPIRITISM AND OCCULTISM. 

As a hypothesis upon which to explain the rationale of 
whatever of natural phenomena is mysterious, spiritism 
originates in the minds of men when they first begin to 
recog-nize the relationship of cause and effect, and con- 
tinues up into the times of the hig-hest intellectual de- 
velopment. Primitive man, of all races and all coun- 
tries, early noticed that the dry leaves upon the ground 
were often suddenly lifted and carried along without vis- 
ible cause; the trees of his native forest were bended this 
way and that, by a mighty invisible power, and often 
they were violently torn from the soil, or broken off, and 
thrown to the ground, as an infuriated man would break 
down or uproot a sapling no thicker than his thumb — the 
invisible power had passions like unto his own. The sea 
would be suddenly aroused from its placidity and rolled 
in billows toward the beach by an invisible power that 
he could only in awe call omnipotent. He called this 



¥ 



SPIRITISM AS A WORKING HYPOTHESIS. 63 

invisible power "spirit," the wind. Man noticed that by 
his breath he could move the dust, leaves and other lig-ht 
objects, and even make tiny waves upon the brook from 
which he drank, just as the wind moved the trees and the 
g-reat ocean; his breath, too, was "spirit," and we yet 
call our breathing" re-5^/r-ation. His spirit was feeble — 
the other was the "Great Spirit." "And the Spirit of 
Elohim moved upon the face of the waters." (Gen. i:2.) 
Man could send forth his breath — spirit — this way or that 
as he "willed," and so he inferred that the greater breath 
came and went by an act of will — "the wind bloweth 
where it listeth" — a better rendering: " The Spirit goeth 
where he willeth." 

So man, even in this age of science, whenever unable 
to see a cause for any phenomenon, finds "spirit" a con- 
venient explanation. Whatever is "hidden" as to its 
origin and mysterious as to its ways, is classed as occult 
and supposed to be the manifestation of "spirit" of some 
kind. But gradually from prehistoric times when anim- 
ism was universal, one by one the phenomena of nature 
have been discovered to be parts of an invariable succes- 
sion of sequences and not the spontaneous and sporadic 
creation of any "spirit" entity "within or back of mat- 
ter," until only a remnant is now believed bv intelligent 
people to be of "spirit" volitional origin. And a few see 
a writing on the wall which foretells the time almost at 
hand when «// phenomena of nature, including the men- 
tal and not excepting the " will " of man, will be known 
to be natural and inevitable sequences ot preceding phe- 
nomena, and the cause of every effect itself an effect. 

Men seem to be intoxicated with a whimsical prejudice 
ag'ainst what they unwarrantedly stig-matize as "mere 



64 A FUTURE LIFE? 

dead matter," Some even close their eyes and declare that 
matter does not exist — that "all is spirit! " If they mean 
by "dead matter" inactive matter, they are mistaken 
as to the facts, for all matter is incessantly active. Men 
speak of matter as g"ross, as though they had found the 
ultimate, indivisible particle — the atom — to be as big" as 
a billiard ball. They speak of matter as base and evil, as 
though the g"lorious galaxy of the heavens, the smiling 
flower, the beautiful bird, the wonderful human body, and 
all else we see are not matter. The truth is, matter holds 
in its embrace the destiny of all that is or ever will be. 



CHAPTER VI. 
•• SCIENTIFIC argume:n^ts" criticised. 

§41. — THE MECHANIC AI, HYPOTHESIS. 

All are but parts of one stupendous Whole, 
Whose body Nature is, and God the Soul. — Pope, 

A FAVORITE argument of those of a scientific, or 
1 V rather a philosophical, trend of mind, who be- 
lieve in the existence of a spirit entity or soul tempora- 
rily and unessentially connected with the human body, is 
this : The material org-anization of man, with its bony 
frame-work, jointed levers, tubes, bellows, nerve-wire 
conductors, grinding mill, double camera with their lenses 
and iris-shutters and sensitive plates under the brows and 
their dark room and developing apparatus and chemicals 
in the skull, etc. — the adaptation of material means to 
mechanical and chemical ends — is a machine; a machine 
is not self-operative, but requires force to initiate and 
maintain its movements, and 7nind or intelligence to di- 
rect its movements so as to accomplish proper results. 
The human body, therefore as a machine, is incapable of 
action without the vital force, and cannot adapt its action 
to accomplish useful ends without an intelligent, inde- 
pendent operator, and that operator we call the soul or 
spirit, which is not dependent upon the machine for its 
existence, but uses it for economic reasons only. 

One defect of this alleged argument is, that it "proves 
too much" if it proves anything. If we admit its validity 
we are forced to the conclusion that not only man, but all 
things have souls— spirit operators, which carries us back 

(65) 



,66 A FUTURE LIFE ? 

in our philosophy to the animism of our prehistoric fore- 
fathers. The body of the dog" is such a machine, hence 
the dog" has a soul or spirit ; the oyster is such a machine 
and it, also, has a soul; the busy microbe is a machine, 
and so has a spirit; and those "simple, jelly-like dots of 
almost homogfeneous plasm — the protozoa," bodies of a 
sing"le cell each, simple thoug^h they be, are machines and 
so must each have a spirit to operate it. The g-reat oaks 
and palm-trees are machines, and, as the ancients believed 
emphatically, there are spirits in trees; and so of all the 
veg-etable v^orld. 

We may not stop even here; for the earth, with its won- 
derful swing- in its orbit, ever true to its unbeaten path 
around the sun which affords the chang-e of seasons, and 
its equally wonderful daily revolution upon its axis, more 
exact in its measurement of time than the finest man-made 
clock; with its rocky skeleton supporting its clayey flesh, 
its gfreat river-veins and rivulet-capillaries; its r3^thmic 
breathing- of air in and out of its great lung-s, the vegeto- 
animal king-dom, its maintainance of evironment suited 
to the necessities of a wonderful world of plant and ani- 
mal life — the earth is a machine, and it must have a soul, 
a spirit commensurate with its mag-nitude, power and ac- 
complishments ; and being- so g-reat, its spirit must be a 
g'od or g-oddess— being- "the mother of all living-," its 
spirit is feminine, and once was called "Eve ;" she was 
apparently of more importance than the sun, moon and 
stars, and so she has been called Maia, mother of the 
gods, and Mary " Mother of God." 

The solar system is a machine of correlated parts — it 
must have an operating- spirit; even the entire material 
universe is a machine, and must be operated by an infinite, 
omnipotent, omniscient spirit, and this is what such phi- 



"SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTS" CRITICISED. 67 

losophers conceive to be "God." Let me quote a declara- 
tion of an ultra radical of these philosophers. In Thesis 
19 of his Universal Monistic Alliance^ Prof. Ernst Haeckel 
says : "In our modern science, the idea 'God' can be de- 
termined only so far as we see in 'God 'the last indis- 
cernible cause of all things, the unconscious hypothetical 
'orig-inal cause of substance.' " This is the " Immanent 
God" of Unitarianism, the God of pantheistic deism less 
consciousness — a kind of gfasiform ///vertebrate, as com- 
pared with the theistic God to whom Haeckel applies the 
epithet " g"asiform vertebrate." 

Even the hj'^pothetical atom — the individual far excel- 
lence — must have a spirit to account for its "selective af- 
finity," its chemical likes and dislikes, its "sensibility" — 
even the gfreat so-called materialistic monist. Prof. Ernst 
Haeckel, declares: "In conversation with disting-uished 
physicists and chemists I have often found that they will 
not hear a word about a 'soul' in the atom. In my opin- 
ion, however, this 7mist necessarily be assumed to explain 
the si7ni>lest physical and chemical processes. ^^ ( Wonders 
of Life, page 82, Eng. edition.) This is exactly the spir- 
itistic hypothesis — the basis of spiritism, the essence of 
dualism, the antithesis of monism. 

§ 42. — MONISTIC VIEW OF THE MECHANICAI. THEORY. 

This conception lof "God" as the soul of the universe 
and "chemical affinity" as the soul of the atom embraces 
the subordinate conception that these cosmic and atomic 
souls are inseparable from and dependent upon matter or 
"substance," and cannot exist separate and apart from 
matter as independent entities ; and the same philosophy 
conceives of the existence of a human soul with the same 
limitations. It follows from this that the existence of 



68 A FUTURE LIFE ? 

God (the cosmic soul) before the creation of the mate- 
rial universe was impossible, and this involves a contra- 
diction of another dictum of this same philosophy, that 
this "God" is "the original cause of substance "=^ mat- 
ter plus motion — in reality, matter in motion. And it also 
follows from this conception of a human soul, that this 
soul is not immortal in the sense of living- as a personal 
independent entity after the death of the body. Regard- 
ing" Haeckel as the most scientific and g-reatest living 
representative and exponent of these doctrines, I will re- 
peat here some of his words most pertinent thereto : 

§ 43. — HAKCKKL ON THK SOUIv AND IMMORTAIylTY. 

From the Riddle of the Universe; page 89: " What we 
call soul is, in my opinion, a natural phenomenon. T 
therefore consider psycholog-y to be a branch of natural 
science — a section of physiology." Pag-e 210 : " If we take 
a comprehensive glance at all the modern anthropolog"y, 
psycholog:y and cosmology, teach with regard to athanat- 
ism [doctrine of immortality], we are forced to this defi- 
nite conclusion: 'The belief in the immortality of the 
human soul is a dog"ma which is in hopeless contradiction 
with the most important truths of modern science.'" 

From yl Universal Monistic Alliance, Thesis 17: "The 
soul {psyched of man, considered as a separate supernatu- 
ral being" by both mystic metaphysics and theology, due 
to the astounding progress of modern biology, especially 
that of comparative research of the brain, has been recog- 
nized as the totality of brain functions. The action of 
the hig-her soul org-an, or thinking" organ, being" a certain 
area of the cortex of the cerebrum, with man groes on ac- 
cording to the same laws of pS3^cho-physics as with the 
other mammals, and especially the anthropoids, next in 
relationship to man. This activity, of course, becomes 



"SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTS" CRITICISED. 69 

extinct in death, and in our days it appears to be perfect- 
ly absurd to expect, nevertheless, a personal immortality 
of the soul." 

Without here controverting* the machanical theor}', I 
pass this monistic view as leading; inevitably to the con- 
clusion that the human soul cannot and therefore will 
not survive the death of the body. But there is another 
view of the mechanical theory that must be reckoned with 
before we can arrive at a final comprehensive conclusion. 

§ 44. — DUALISTIC VIEW OF THE MECHANICAL THEORY. 

A large majorit}^ of those who believe in the machine 
theory accept the dualistic view; that is, they believe the 
material human body to be a machine whose movements 
and physiological activities are due to "vital force," an 
inferior sort of mortal spook which is neither chemical 
nor physical, but a force stii generis — not a correlation of 
exceedingl}^ complex chemical and ph)^sical activities in 
a specific environment, but a unique force which super- 
sedes and displaces the ordinary so-called forces of inor- 
gfanic or so-called dead matter ; and that the soul or spirit 
is a distinct entity essentialh^ independent of the body, 
but using it probationall}^ as a conv^enient means of ac- 
quiring knowledg-e and development fitting it for a higher 
plane of existence in a life after death without the use 
or need of such a material machine. 

The advocates of this theory often use this supposed 
analogy to illustrate it : "The bod}^ is like unto a steam 
engine, and the spirit like unto the engineer who directs 
its operation to accomplish that which is for his own bene- 
fit ; when the eng-ine wears out or the eng-ineer ceases to 
use it, he does not die, but continues to exist independ- 
ently of the machine." And then the advocate, perhaps 



70 A FUTURE LIFE? 

unconsciously, adopts the sophism of proving- the fact 
by the assumed analog-y, disregarding" (often ignorant of) 
the truth that the fact must be first established and the 
validity of the analogy rested upon the fact and not the 
verity of the supposed fact upon the assumed analogy — 
that analog"y itself must rest upon proof, and when so 
established is unnecessary asprooifB-nd useful only as il- 
lustration — a substitution of the more simple or familiar 
as an easy means of imparting a clear knowledge of some- 
thing* known to be similar but more abstruse or less fa- 
miliar to the learner. 

Another favorite illustration, often, too, mistaken for 
proof, of some dualistic spiritists, is that of assuming an 
analog"y between a musical instrument and the human 
body and between the musician who plays upon it and 
the spirit. I once listened to a lecture by a Los Angeles 
physician, who passes with some Spiritualists as not only 
a scientific reasoner but as a " wise" man ; he made this 
analog"y serve as his principal argument in support of the 
theory that the spirit and the body were two distinct en- 
tities, and the '* spirit is the man" while the body is a 
mere machine or instrument for the temporary use of the 
spirit man. The speaker proceeded with perfect confi- 
dence, apparently wholly unconscious that anyone could 
doubt there was any such analogy, and that his entire 
argument rested upon a mere assumption that itself was 
as much in need of proof as the proposition he thought 
to support and even demonstrate by it ; and he is not the 
only reputed "well-posted man" who is blind to the soph- 
istry of this kind of argumentation. It was the basis of 
all ancient mytholog-y, and is the sandy foundation of 
many modern theological theories. 

The speaker described the supposed analogy and then 



''SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTS" CRITICISED. 71 

announced the fact that thoug'h the piano be perfect in 
every particular it would never produce a sing-le note of 
sound, much less a systematized complex series of chords, 
except when manipulated by the human hands, directed 
by the human spirit. But he did not mention the equally 
sigfnificant fact that the human spirit without material 
hands and a piano could never produce the same kind of 
music, nor that the man had a living brain while the pi- 
ano had not. 

The primar)^ problem to be solved before this analog'y 
can be log-ically and rationally used even as an illustra- 
tion, is this: Is there really any analog)^ between the or- 
ganism of the man and that of the piano — are the mate- 
rials of their structure, their manner of construction, re- 
pair and reproduction, their adaptation to ends, their ope- 
rating causes or "forces," their methods of action, the 
same or similar ? And is there really any analogy be- 
tween a man, even if a duad of body and spirit, or a triad 
of body, soul and spirit, and a human spirit exclusively? 
And is the spirit of a man related to the action of his 
body or his brain, the same or similar to the relation of 
the whole man to the piano ? 

It will be seen to be evident in these questions that we 
must know that all these things actually exist before we 
can compare them with one another ; we know the piano 
and the man a^ a living being exist — we cannot doubt it ; 
but do we know that such a thing as an independent spirit 
exists in man — a sort of "first " or uncaused cause of his 
bodily or mental activities? If not, the citing of the an- 
alogy is illogical, unreasonable and sophistical, and so 
unjustifiable for any purpose ; if we do know it exists, the 
analogy is unnecessary to "prove" that it exists. There- 



72 . A FUTURE LIFE? 

fore, without either admitting- or denying- the existence 
of a spirit in the human body, we are logically bound 
to reject the piano and the machine assumed analogy as 
proof or in any deg-ree evidence of its existence. 

As to the question of a future life, these mechanical 
theories do not answer it. If we admit the truth of the 
monistic theory of a dependent immanent spirit or soul, 
we are forced to den}^ any after-life without a resurrection 
of the body upon which it is dependent ; and, if we admit 
the truth of the dualistic theory, we are justified only in 
believing in the possibilily^ but not the actuality or even 
the probability of a future unembodied spirit life, unless 
we have real evidence of it added to the theory. As to 
the argfument from these analogies, if we admit their va- 
Hdit}^ we are forced logically to the conclusion that they 
weigh against rather than for the doctrine of immortality; 
for the eng-ineer and the musician ultimately die, and, if 
they be real analog-ues of the spirit, the latter must also 
ultimately die. We are bound to carry out the analog:}^ 
to its leg"itimate end. But I do not admit that this sup- 
posed analog-y exists, nor that it is any evidence whatever 
for or against the existence or future life of a spirit. 

§ 45. — THE ARGUMKNT BY ANAI.YSIS. 

The object of this dicussion, let it be remembered, as I 
stated at the start, is not to try to prove or disprove 
that man is destined to a life after the eve^t called death, 
but to investigate the grounds upon which belief in a fu- 
ture life has been and is now based, leaving- each reader 
to judge for himself as to their efficiency or inefficiency. 

One way some spiritists have of "demonstrating" the 
existence of a soul or spirit entity within the material 
human body is what I shall call that of analysis and ex- 



"SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTS" CRITICISED. 73 

elusion. This was considered by the above-mentioned 
doctor to be a strong-hold in his lecture. He dissected a 
man substantially as follows : 

*' We take ofif his skin and lay it upon this table. Is 
that the man ? Of course not. We take off the entire 
muscular system and lay it upon the table. Is that the 
man ? O no. So we do with the venous system, the 
arterial system, the digfestive system and the nervous 
system, and we find that neither of these is the man. The 
bony skeleton is all that is left, and surely that is not 
the man —the thinking-, free-willing- ego. What is it then 
which wills and thinks ? Let the materialist answer if 
he can ! " The speaker paused for a repl5% and I laconic- 
ally answered, " The brain." With a haughty snort of af- 
fected disgust the doctor cried out: *' The brain ? Dead 
matter think?'''' ''No," I replied, " not dead matter, but 
the living- brain." "No," said the speaker, "the brain 
is only the organ throug-h which spirit manifests mind, 
thought, will, etc. ; it is the instrument of the spirit." 
And then proceeded to " prove " it by the use of the an- 
alogy of the musician and the piano, discussed above in 
§ 44, third paragraph. 

This is another of those sophistical "arguments" that 
are so convenient for superficial reasoners and so convinc- 
ing to superficial thinkers. Let us try this method upon 
a tree, for instance. Remove all the leaves and lay them 
aside in a heap : are they the tree ? No. Strip off the 
bark and lay it aside in a pile : is that the tree? No. So 
proceed part by part till the tree is separated into piles of 
leaves, of bark, of boughs, of roots, and the woody trunk 
only remains, and neither it nor any of the other parts is 
the tree. Does that prove that the real tree is a spirit 



74 A FUTURE LIFE? 

and has eluded our observation in the analysis ? A tree 
is a complex ag-grregfation of correlated parts correlated 
with a specific complex environment, and so is a man. 

No, this argfument will not do. It reminds me of the 
boy who killed and dissected a pig: to find its squeal, and 
failing: to find it, concluded that duringf the operation the 
squeal had escaped unobserved and was elsewhere. 

§ 46. — THE SYNTHETICAL EXPERIMENT. 

It is sometimes said that a man must be more than a 
complex org'anization of matter under chemical and phys- 
ical laws, because the chemist and the mechanic cannot 
build a man, or even a singfle org-anic cell, from the *'raw 
materials" — the chemical elements and inorg-anic com- 
pounds, that will manifest the phenomena of life. But 
this arg"ument also is fallacious. All chemical action is 
subject to conditions, and all that any chemist can do to 
effect chemical combination or disinteg-ration, is to sup- 
ply the conditions under which the desired action invari- 
ably takes place. These conditions have to be discovered 
by observation and experiment. Much progfress has been 
made in the discovery of the conditions under which vari- 
ous chemical chang-es occur; but the field of possibility is 
apparently well-nig"h infinite, and there are vast reg-ions 
on the plane of simple chemical action that are yet unex- 
plored, while in the realm of hig-hly complicated actions 
and reactions the chemical explorer has as yet scarcely 
set foot. Besides, the human mind itself is subject to 
conditions with limitations, and it is not only possible 
but higfhly probable that there have been and still are 
conditions upon which many of the phenomena of nature 
depend that are beyond the reach or capability of man's 
limited powers of observation and means of experimenta- 



''SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTS" CRITICISED. 75 

tion, so that thoug^h the chemist cannot now nor ever can 
produce all the conditions upon which the transmutation 
of chemical into physiological activities depend, we are 
not justified in concluding- that nature itself does not, or 
cannot, produce those conditions just as well as nature 
produces the conditions upon which simpler chemical ac- 
tions depend and occur without man's interference. 

§ 47. — ANOTHER ANALOGY ARGUMENT/ 

The spirit and the material body have often been lik- 
ened to a house and its tenant — "houses of clay " as tem- 
porar3^ homes of immaterial human beings, spirits. And 
this assumed analogy is often accepted as evidence of the 
existence of an independent spirit entity within the body, 
a sophism so apparent that it should be instantly recog"- 
nized by everyone capable of even the simplest reason- 
ing". It is the same fallacy as that of the assumed anal- 
og"y of the engine and engineer and of the piano and the 
musician (§44), that of assuming the truth of the thing to 
be proved and using the assumption as proof — simply a 
'* begging of the question." First, to establish such an- 
alogy, the existence of a spirit inhabiting the body as a 
man inhabits a house must be proved by facts, and then 
the analogy would not be needed as evidence, and would 
be useful only as illustration in teaching. Secondly, the 
analogy, if admitted, falls much short of illustrating the 
spiritistic theory, to say nothing of proving its correct- 
ness. For in the case of the man and the house, they are 
both material entities plainl}^ observable by our senses, 
while, on the other hand, the "spirit" in the "house of 
clay" is not cognizable by any of our senses; the man does 
not necessarily occupy the same house from his birth to 
death, or carry it about with him from place to place, as 



76 A FUTURE LIFE? 

the supposed spirit is supposed to do ; when his house is 
destroyed he does not change his plane of being", but goes 
into another; houses are not "propagated" or built in a 
way at all similar to the propagation and growth of the 
body ; and in every point but the single one of living in 
the body, there is absence of similarity. 

It is often said that when a man dies his spirit lays off 
the bod}^ as a man lays off a worn-out coat ; but this is 
onl3^ another form of the assumed house analogy, and the 
foregoing criticism of that fallacy applies to this as well. 
And there are many other forms of it, of which the satne 
may be said. . 

The conclusion seems to me to be clear, that whether 
the spiritistic hypothesis be true or false, these "argu- 
ments" from assumed analogies are illogical, unreasona- 
ble, sophistical, and worthless for or against it. 



CHAPTER VII. 

NEW THOUGHT THEORIES OF THE SOUIL. 
AXD A FUTURE LIFE. 

§48. — WHAT IS " NKW thought"? 

^^^"T^KW Thoug-ht is a name much used of late, but 
1 ^ just what the term means (in this special use of it) 
not even its professed exemplars and propagandists seem 
to know. It is, apparently, a sort of blanket phrase used 
to embrace all the odds and ends of metaphysics and bi- 
zarre practices — a sort of ^^ omnium gatheru^n'''^ of old and 
new notions, indistinct and unclassified, with just enough 
of the results of modern scientific investigation in it to 
give intellectual flavor, and enough of ancient transcend- 
entalism in it to give a mystic and religious flavor. 

Nothing quicker throws a Christian Scientist into a fit 
of "explaining " than to tell him that " Christian Science 
is neither Christian nor science." And this laconism may 
be slightly varied to apply it to New Thought, b}^ saying- 
that " it is neither new nor thought." It has been often 
confessed that " New Thought is, after all, old thought," 
and I believe that, for the most part, it is not thought at 
all, but sentiment. 

Christian Science itself belongs to that chaos of cant 
and hazy sentimentalism termed New Thought ; but it 
does not announce any theory of a future life that is dis- 
tinguishable from those of other forms of spiritism, ex- 

(77) 



78 A FUTURE LIFE? 

cept the dogrna that " spirit only is real and matter is an 
error of mortal mind." Of course there is no scientific ba- 
sis for this dog"ma to rest upon, even if it is character- 
istic of "Science." It rests solely upon the authority of 
Mrs. Edd}^ And as for this and a g"reat many other onl}^ 
slig'htly differing- New Thought spiritistic theories and 
af&rmations, I will add nothing- to what I have said of 
"Spiritistic Hypotheses " in preceding- sections of this 
discussion ; but there is one hypothesis really thoug-h not 
professedl}^ belong-ing to the New Thoug-ht, which is set 
forth by its learned and ingenious author as an avowedly 
scientific hypothesis, which I will now proceed to briefly 
discuss. I refer to the hypothesis of the late Thomson 
Jay Hudson, Ph. D., LL. D,, that the mind of man is dual: 
that is, he has two minds, one objective and the mere 
function of the brain and mortal ; the other subjective, 
a distinct entity and immortal. 

§49. — DR. Hudson's hypotheses. 

Dr. Hudson wrote four very important and interesting- 
books, in each of which his hypothesis of the dual mind 
and that of the subjective mind a distinctive and immor- 
tal entity, are the central ideas. They are. The Law oj 
Psychic Phenomena (which should be read first j, A Sci- 
entific Demonstration of the Futu7'e Life^ The Divine Pedi- 
g-ree of Man, and The Law of Mental Medicine. In order 
that my readers may know exactly what Dr. Hudson's 
theories were, I will quote his own lucid languag-e from 
these works. 

Of the Dual Mind : " Man has, or appears to have, two 
minds, each endowed with separate and distinct attri- 
butes and powers; each capable, under certain conditions, 
of independent action. It should be clearly understood 



THE "SUBJECTIVK MIND'' THE "SOUL." 79 

at the outset that for the purpose of arriving- at a correct 
conclusion it is a matter of indifference whether we con- 
sider that man is endowed with two distinct minds, or 
that his mind possesses certain attributes and powers 
under some conditions, and certain other attributes and 
powers under other conditions. It is sufficient to know 
that everything- happens just as though he were endowed 
with a dual mental orgfanization." 

"Under the rules of correct reasoning, therefore, I 
have a right to assume that man has two minds ; and 
the assumption is so stated in its broadest terms, as the 
first proposition of my hypothesis. For convenience, I 
shall designate the one as the objective mind, and the 
other as the subjective mind. The second proposition is 
that the subjective mind is constantl}^ amenable to con- 
trol b}^ suggestion. The third, or subsidiary, proposition 
is, that the subjective mind is incapable of inductive rea- 
soning." — Law of Psychic Pheno7neiia, pp. 25-6. 

" In point of fact, that which, for convenience, I have 
chosen to designate as the subjective mind, appears to be 
a separate and distinct entity; and the real distinctive dif- 
ference between the two minds seems to consist in the 
fact that the 'objective mind' is merely the function of the 
ph.ysical brain, while the 'subjective mind' is a distinct 
entity, possessing- independent powers and functions, 
having a mental org-anization of its own, and being cap- 
able of sustaining- an existence independently of the body. 

In other words, it is the soul." — p. 30 "The two 

minds being possessed of independent powers and func- 
tions, it follows as a necessary corollary that the subjec- 
tive mind of an individual is as amenable to the control 
of his own objective min^ as to the objective mind of an- 
other." — p. 31 "For our boasted 'god-like rea- 
son' is of the earth, earthy. It is the noblest attribute of 
the finite mind, it is true, but it is essentially finite. It is 



80 A FUTURE LIFE? 

the outgrrowth of our objective existence. It is our safest 
guide in the walks of earthly life. It is our faithful moni- 
tor and g'uardian in our daily strug-g-le with our physical 
environment. It it is our most reliable auxiliary in our 
efforts to penetrate the secrets of Nature, and wrest from 
her the means of subsistence. But its functions cease 
with the necessities which called it into existence ; for it 
will be no long-er useful when the physical form has per- 
ished, and the veil is lifted which hides from mortal eyes 
that world where all truth is revealed. Then it is that 
the soul — the subjective mind — will perform its normal 
functions, untrammelled by the physical form which im- 
prisons it and binds it to earth, and in its native realm 
of truth, unimpeded by the laborious processes of finite 
reasoning-, it will imbibe the truth from its Eternal 
Source."— pp. 73-4. 

The above extracts cover comprehensively the general 
principles of Dr. Hudson's ingenious theories. Some sub- 
sidiary principles of his hypotheses will be given expres- 
sion in other sections of this chapter. I will now pro- 
ceed to examine the chief propositions of these hypotheses 
singly as to their basis in fact and reason. 

Dr. Hudson's Hypotheses Critically Examined. 

§ 50. — HAS MAN TWO MINDS ? 

At the very foundation of his hypothesis of a future 
life, which the Doctor assumes in the title of one of his 
works to be " a scientific demonstration," is an equivocal 
statement which much weakens his superstructure, and 
in discussing his fundamental propositions serially I will 
number this — 

1. Man has or appears to have two minds, the Object- 
ive and the Subjective, 

In science, that which is and that which appears to he 



HUDSON'S HYI^OTHESES CRITICISED, 81 

cannot thus be grouped tog-ether as fact. For instance, in 
astronomy, where would be our Copernican system if its 
founder had predicated his basic proposition thus : The 
earth is, or appears to be, the center of the solar system ? 
But instead he said the earth appears to he^ but the sun 
IS the the center of the solar system. The chief differ- 
ence between science and ordinary thought-to-be knowl- 
edg-e is, that the latter accepts as truth that which «^- 
fears to be, while the former accepts as truth only that 
which is. And all scientists know that mere appearance 
is extremely likely to be the exact opposite of the truth, 
so that in undertaking a new investigation they look be- 
yond superficial appearances by the eye of reason, expect- 
ing to find reality very different from or the reverse of the 
superficially apparent. So I will say of this first propo- 
sition of Dr. Hudson's, that the fact that man appears to 
have two minds is against rather than in favor of the 
truth of the dual theory, unsupported by positive facts. 

§51. — ANOTHER SANDY FOUNDATION. 

Another proposition, placed by the Doctor as a founda- 
tion of his "correct reasoning" on this matter, is also 
very far from sound. It is this: 

2. For reasoning purposes, it is a matter of indifference 
whether we consider there are two distinct minds, or one 
mind having different attributes and powers under differ- 
ent conditions. 

In view of the propositions Dr. Hudson tried to estab- 
lish chiefly by the assumption that man has two minds, 
it seems absurd "that for reasoning purposes, it is a mat- 
ter of indifference" if he really has but one mind ! — that 
for reasoning purposes we have the rig-ht to assume the 
truth of a false premise if it suits our purpose ! Science 



82 A FUTURE LIFE? 

collects facts and arrives at principles by comparison and 
generalization; but in this case a principle is first assumed 
to be true and then certain other things are assumed to 
be facts because they support the assumed principle — a 
kind ot sophistry aptly called '* reasoning" in a circle." 

Let it be remembered that the Doctor's conclusion is, 
that one mind becomes extinct at the death of the body, 
and that the other does not, and we see plainly the ab- 
surdity of this proposition. 

§52.— MAN HAS TWO MINDS, IS " ASvSUMKD."' 



3. Under the rules of correct reasoning," the Doctor 
claims the "right to assume that man has two minds." 

If the rules of correct reasoning confer upon Dr. Hud- 
son the '*right to assume" that man has two minds, they 
must also confer on his opponents the "right to assume" 
that man has but one mind, which "possesses certain at- 
tributes and powers under some conditions, and certain 
other attributes and powers under other conditions," as 
"everything happens just as though he were endowed 
with" one complex " mental organization." 

For the sake of demonstrating what the exercise of 
this "right to assume " can do to Dr. Hudson's "scien- 
tific demonstration of the future life," I will accept the 
one-mind hypothesis for the time being, and follow his 
reasoning, and even, to some extent, use his words and 
phrases. " For convenience, I will designate the" mind 
action of the cerebral portion of the sensory nervous sys- 
tem "as the objective mind, and the" mind action of the 
spinal and ganglionic portions of the nervous system "as 
the subjective mind," or reflex and hereditary mentation. 
The objective mind by the reciprocitity of its component 
elements, results in that unitization of mental action we 



HUDSON ^S HYPOTHESES CRITICISED. 83 

call consciousness^ so that we may call objective thougfht 
conscious mentation, and subjective mentation we may 
call subconscious thoug-ht. As simple illustrations of the 
difference between these two kinds of mental action I 
will cite these cases : 

The infant, a few moments after birth will take the 
nipple into its mouth and immediately perform the act 
of sucking as perfectly as it can ever do in after life; and 
it will within a few hours grasp with its hands a slender 
stick and support its own weig-ht, hang-ing- like a monkey 
from the limb of a tree. These are reflex acts from in- 
herited, subconscious mentation, the ''subjective mind," 
the "immortal soul," according- to Dr. Hudson. An adult 
will take the infant's finger between his teeth and press 
upon it gently, but restraining himself from actually 
biting- it; and he will wash the child's bod}^ thoug-h it 
screams with terror. These are acts resulting- from cere- 
bral mentation, conscious thought, the "objective mind," 
"a mere function of the brain," says Hudson. 

I have said that the subjective mind is of the spinal cord 
and sympathetic-nervous system, and Dr. Hudson in his 
work, A Scieniljic Demonstration of the Future Life^ de- 
votes much space and strong; evidence to prove this prop- 
osition, and I accept it as a solid basis of proof that the 
subjective mind is a subjective, reflex and subconscious 
action of the same g-eneral function of the cerebro-spinal 
and gfang-lionic sensory-nervous systems, of which the 
objective mind is the conscious counterpart, and hence 
that if the one is destined to extinction at the death of 
the body, or to a future life, the other is also. 

I will continue to follow up the series of propositions 
embraced in |the quotations I have made in § 49, and in 
commenting: on them will continue the assumption that 



84 A FUTURE LIFE? 

the mind is not dual, but one general function of a com- 
plex nervous system. 

§53. — *' finite" MIND CONTROLS THE INFINITE '*SOUI,!'' 

4. The subjective mind is constantly amenable to con- 
trol by sugfgfestion from the objective mind either of the 
same or another person. 

In § 49 I have quoted Hudson as saying: that reason, the 
*'noblest attribute of finite mind [the objective mind] is 
essentially finite ;" this being* said in '* proof* that it is 
destined to extinction at death, I am justifiable, I think, 
in inferring that he considers the subjective mind to be 
'* infinite "as an essential condition of its immortality. 
If this inference is correct, and it be taken in conjuction 
with this 4th proposition. Dr. Hudson is placed in the 
absurd position of advocating the truth of the preposter- 
ous paradox that the infinite soul of man "is constantly 
amenable to control by suggestion from the [finite] 
objective mind" ! — the infinite subject to the finite ! 

§54. — THE "infinite" HAS LIMITATIONS ! 

5. "The subjective mind is incapable of inductive rea- 
soning." 

Another absurd paradox into which Dr. Hudson's hy- 
potheses led him is, that the "infinite" soul has limita- 
tions — "is incapable of inductive reasoning." That is, 
that that which is limitless has limitations — the infinite 
is finite ; that the finite objective mind of man can rea- 
son inductively and so is capable of outdoing the infinite 
subjective mind of man, his immortal soul ! 

Andhe was forced by his hypotheses to another absurd 
conclusion, viz: " That this apparent limitation of intel- 
lectual power is, in reality, a god-like attribute of mind. 



HUDSON'S HYPOTHESES CRITICISED, 85 

God himself cannot reason inductively." — Law of Psychic 
Phenomena^ p. 73 ; see also Sci, Deni. of the Future Life. 
Infinity is one of the most essential attributes of " God," 
according" to Christian theology, and Dr. Hudson strongly 
endorsed Christianity and the teachings and practices of 
(the supposed) Jesus. Man, then, has-been endowed by 
his Creator with an objective mind, something- he him- 
self did not possess, thus contradicting- the truism that 
** nothing can come from nothing," and the "divine reve- 
lation" that '*God made man in his own image." And 
that finite mind with which the subjective mind of God 
endowed man is superior to the infinite God himself in 
that it can reason inductively, while he cannot ! Thus 
we see what absurd conclusions one may be led down 
to by '* assuming-" ** indifferent" premises, even '* under 
the rules of correct reasoning-." I would suggest that the 
first rule of correct reasoning- demands that the premises 
be absolutely true, 

§55.— IS THE SUBJECTIVE MIND A DISTINCT ENTITY? 

In order that he should have any ground at all upon 
which to construct an argument in favor of his theory 
that the subjective mind of man is his soul and destined to 
a future life. Dr. Hudson was compelled to assume that — 

6. The subjective mind is an entity separate and dis- 
tinct from the objective mind and the body. 

Dr. Hudson expressly states in his several books that 
the objective mind is the '* mere function of the physical 
brain " and is extinguished with the death of the body. 
But, if we admit the two minds are not simply two modes 
of action of one mind, we 7mist admit that the two are 
very closely related to each other — twin sisters, or the 
bass and the soprano of the songlof life, as it were — simi- 



86 A FUTURE LIFE? 

lar in essence and action, or it is unscientific and even 
a violation of common sense to classif}^ them tog^ether 
under the term 7nind. 

If one mind is essentially a mere function (action) of 
organized matter, it would surely be a far call to say an- 
other mind was not the " mere function" of another lit- 
tle-differing" organization of similar matter, but that it 
" is an entity separate and distinct from " the other mind 
or any organization of any kind of matter. A '' distinct 
entity " capable of thought, "perfect memory," etc., as 
"assumed" by the Doctor, is 2^ personal beings in no way 
to be classed with a " mere function " of any one organ. 
He admits that this distinct entity "acts through" the 
organism known as the spinal cord and its nerve-connec- 
tions with other organs, but does not admit that the sub- 
jective mind is the " mere function" of the cord and the 
nerves, though it is a kind of " mind " and that cord and 
nerves a kind of brain — in fact a prolongation of the cra- 
nial brain. They are not distinct and independent organs 
but one continuous nervous organization, similar in ma- 
terials, tissues, and all their physical properties. Why 
does he make this extremely broad distinction between 
the "two minds" as to their essential nature, and be- 
tween the functions of the two chief parts of the general 
nervous system ? Because all, or even any, of the facts of 
biology — of anatomy, physiology and psychology — lead 
him by induction to it ? Not at all. He assumed that 
the subjective mind of man is his immortal soul, and from 
this assumption deductively concluded that it is a "dis- 
tinct entity" capable of existence independent of the ob- 
jective mind and the material body. This conclusion was 
necessary to his theory of a future life, but it is plainly a 
deduction from false premises, and so is itself false. 



HUDSON'S HYPOTHESES CRITICISED, 87 

I am surprised that such a clear thinker and unusually 
logical reasoner should fall into this error, and the more 
so because of his excellent remarks upon the nature and 
use of the working- hypothesis and on induction and de- 
duction, and warning against the danger of falling into 
error by reasoning from false premises, with which he 
prefaces his hypotheses as set forth in his works. 

§56. — KURKKA ! ''it is THE SOUI." ! 

7. The subjective mind is capable of sustaining exist- 
ence independent of the body — " it is the sotil.^'' 

Let me show you the earthly " home of the soul." See 
this snake : dissect it. Open the skull, and you find but 
a rudiment of a brain — that organ of which the objective 
mind, "whose noblest attribute is reason," is "but the 
mere function" — the finite, mortal mind. See that long 
back-bone, extending as a series of hollow, jointed sec- 
tions the entire length of the snake's bod)^ In that prone 
tube is housed the spinal cord, the principal organ of the 
subjective mind — a large and powerful nerve. It is the 
home of the sotcl, according to Dr. Hudson ! See this man. 
Behold his capacious skull, a great dome over the temple 
of human life, the body — the crowning glory of evolu- 
tion is contained by it — the massive, convoluted cerebrum 
of a man. But, alas! it is only the organ of which the 
objective, reasoning, progressive mind, is the "mere func- 
tion" ! and when that magnificent organization, the brain 
of a noble man, dies, the finite mind is extinguished. See 
that curved, serpent-like column of bones which forms 
the central support of all the animal organs, but which 
is crowned by the great dome, the skull, with its wonder- 
ful contents. In that more primitive bony tube, lies the 



88 A FUTURE LIFK ? 

spinal cord, twin brother to that of the snake, and home 
of the soul on earth ! according" to Dr. Hudson. 

Does not the very relative positions of these two gfreat 
nerve-centers appeal to you in the name of consistency and 
orderly arrangement, of symmetry and order of evolution, 
appeal to your common sense and sense of "the eternal 
fitness of thingfs/' to reject this theory of a human soul 
so primitive in the scale of development, so subordinate 
in its domicile and relationship to the objective mind, 
* 'finite and mortal," so unconscious and subjective? 

§ 57. A FATAL ADMISSION. 

Dr. Hudson says the objective mind cannot be the soul, 
which he ing-enuously holds by preconception is destined 
to a future life, because — 

8. The objective mind is merely the function of the 
physical brain, and reason, its *' noblest attribute," is of 
the earth and essentially finite and mortal. 

Having- commented in the foreg-oing- sections on most 
of the subject-matter of this 8th proposition of the Doc- 
tor's series of hypothetical assumptions, I will here only 
comment briefly on the assertion that humam reason '*is 
of the earth earthy" (Z. ofPsy. Ph. p. 73), and for that 
reason is not destined to a future life. Hudson says : 

**But its [the objective mind's] functions cease with 
the necessities which called it into existence ; for it will 
be no long-er usefuFwhen the physical form has perished, 
and the veil is lifted which hides from mortal eyes that 
world where all truth is revealed." — Ibidem^ p. 73. 

That may be poetry — it is certainly not science. How 
did Dr. Hudson know that "the necessities which called 
it into existence" cease at the death of the body — g-rant- 
ing for the time that there is to be a future life ? What 



HUDSON'S HYPOTHESES CRITICISED. 89 

did he know of the conditions behind that mystic "veil 
which hides from mortal eyes that world " ? How did he 
know that " all truth is revealed " in "that world " ? He 
was a non-believer in the ability of "spirits" — disem- 
bodied "subjective minds," if you please— to communi- 
cate with mortals,; he could have no description of the 
necessities of that country from actual residents of it. 
Did he know that the soul does not at death fly away to 
some other planet and there " be born agfain " into a fu- 
ture life where the "necessities" differ little from those 
of this life ? And how did he know that "the necessities 
which called " the subjective mind " into existence" do not 
cease at death of the body, and with them Us functions? 
Know ? I do not think the good Doctor even pretended 
to know: he only " assumed" that conditions were thus 
and so "over there," because his theory depended upon it. 
I do not here advocate the theory that the objective mind, 
or the one complex mind, is the " soul " and destined to an 
after-death existence, but I conceive that Hudson made 
here an assertion that, if true, is fatal to his own theory. 
It is this : If the objective mind perishes with the neces- 
sities which called it forth, at the death of the body, 
we are justified in predicating: the same of the subjective 
mind, as it can be shown by facts that the necessities 
of the subjective mind are also "of the earth earthy," 
and that there is no more evidence that those necessi- 
ties continue over into a future life than there is that 
those of the objective mind do so. 

8 58 — SUBJECTIVE MIND " OF THE EARTH EARTHY." 

To sustain this proposition I will produce the confession 
and testimony of Thomson Jay Hudson, Ph. D., LL. D., 
himself. I quote from A Scientific Demonstration of the 



90 A FUTURE LIFE? 

Future Life^ p. 262 (see also p. 133 of the L, of Ps. Ph.) : 

9. "So far as this life is concerned, the subjective mind 
has, primarily, but three functions, namely : 1. Self-pre- 
servation ; 2. Reproduction ; 3. Preservation of the off- 
spring". These may be reduced in terms to one, namely: 
The perpetuation of the race or species." 

These functions are those common to animal and man, 
and even largely to the plant, and pertain to the present 
life on earth, and so are "of the earth earthy." Hudson 
emphasizes this confession by adding: "The only normal 
functions performed by the subjective mind during its 
sojourn in the body, and its connection with it, all per- 
tain to the perpetuation of the species." 

Note well that he italicized the word '"''normal.'''' He 
did so because the functions he ascribes to the subjective 
mind as pertaining to a future life are such as are mani- 
fested in psychic phenomena, as clairvoyance, telepathy, 
intuition, etc., which he voluntarily acknowledges are 
abnormal I Think of it : The normal functioning of the 
bodily organs is health, tending to life ; their abnormal 
functioning is disease, tending to death of the organ or 
the entire body. Is not the normal functioning of the 
mind mental health — sanit}^ — tending* to mental life, and 
the abnormal functioning of mind mental disease, insani- 
ty, tending to mental extinction ? Common sense as well 
as science answers emphatically. Yes. 

What a prospect of a future life is this ! An eternal 
existence in a colony of maniacs — a subjective mind wan- 
dering hither and thither on the choppy waves of the 
boundless ocean of eternal subjectivity, a wrecked ship 
that has lost her compass, her charts and her rudder ! 
For Hudson explains that the subjective mind in this life 



\ 



HUDSON'S HYPOTHESES CRITICISED, 91 

manifests the phenomena of insanity when uncontrolled 
by the objective mind, and warns his readers against in- 
dulging" in certain practices of psychism which weaken 
the beneficent guardianship of the objective mind. If its 
association with and subjection to the control and guid- 
ance of the objective mind is necessary to the normal 
functioning of the "soul" in this life, may that not be 
one of " the necessities which called the objective mind 
into existence" ? And may that necessity not continue 
after death if this subjective soul is destined to a future 
life, and so secure for it, also, a future existence ? And, 
should this faithful monitor of the soul "cease to exist 
with the death of the body," what assurance have we that 
we shall not be forever in the sad predicament of the in- 
dulgent " psychic" who in this life has thrown overboard 
the compass, charts and pilot of his subjectiv^e mind ? 

I quote further from the same page, an ominous sen- 
tence which the Doctor re-inforces by printing in italics : 

"// [the subjective raind=the soul] can never perform 
any other function [than that stated above in Proposition 
9], or exercise any other of its tnanifold powers [in this 
life] , except under the most intensely abnormal conditions "z' 

If so, what assurance have we that it will not in its fu- 
ture life be just as subject to " the most intensely abnor- 
mal conditions " ? On page 305, same work, the Doctor 
says that "any employment which unduly develops the 
subjective powers in any direction whatever, is attended 
by abnormal physical and mental conditions." If true, 
and I think it is, what can we expect to result from an ex- 
clusive development of the subjective mind (soul) in the 
future life but terribly abnormal mental conditions ? 

To renounce the orthodox future life in hell for Hud- 



9Z A FUTURE LIFE? 

son's future life of the subjective mind seems to me to be 
only "jumping" from the fire into the frying" pan " ! 

§ 59. — A FINAL POETICAL ASSUMPTION. 

On page 74 of The Law of Psychic Phenomena^ Doctor 
Hudson closes a chapter of the book by throwing science 
to the winds, cutting" loose from control of his objective 
reason and allowing his subjective mind to indite a base- 
less revery as follows : 

10. " . . . . Then it is that the soul — the subjective mind 
— will perform its normal functions, untrammelled by the 
physical form which imprisons it and binds it to earth, and 
in its native realm of truth, unimpeded by the laborious 
processes of finite reasoning", it will imbibe all truth from 
its Eternal Source." 

How did the Doctor find out that the subjective mind's 
"native realm" was that of truth? If now out of that 
realm, why? — did it fall from heaven, "like Lucifer, Son 
of the Morning"? How comes it that this infinite soul 
can be trammelled, imprisoned and bound to earth by 
the finite physical form ? What is to be g"ained by a fu- 
ture life in which we shall be " unimpeded by the labori- 
ous processes of finite reasoning"? How did he know 
that we shall " imbibe all truth from its Infinite Source"? 
Is not this the same old dream of a heaven of indolence 
and vagrancy — a veritable Nirvana ? 



CHAPTER VIII. 

DOES SPIRITUALISM DEMONSTRATE 
A FUTURE LTEE ? 

§ 60. — ESSENTIAL QUALIFICATIONS OF A CRITIC. 

QUESTIONS of scientific and moral importance 
should never be flippantl}^ discussed, extinguished 
by ridicule, "settled" by dogmatism, rejected on dicta of 
incompetent or unqualified opponents, or even criticised 
by those who have not given them unprejudiced, earnest, 
conscientious and thorough examination from every pos- 
sible standpoint. Spiritualism has been both accepted 
and rejected b}^ thousands of people who were without 
anything like adequate natural and acquired qualifica- 
tions for such an investigation. And such people are 
very often exceedinglj^ zealous and active in, on the one 
hand, advocating Spiritualism, and on the other, oppos- 
ing it. The folly and evil of this, in either case, is yery 
evident in view of the fact that some able and learned- 
scientists who have extensivelj^ investigated the phe- 
nomena have arrived at conclusions both for and against 
the S^jiritualistic theory. 

Before I proceed to discuss the Spiritualistic theory, I 
will briefly state the grounds upon which I myself claim 
some degree of essential qualification for doing so. 

Leaving others entirely to their own inferences as to 
my natural ability for such work, I will speak only of my 

(93) 



94 A FUTURE LIFE? 

opportunities, experiences and investigations. But the 
reader is urg-ently requested to keep clearly in mind that 
the object of this treatment of the question of a Future 
Life is not to directly prove or to disprove the truth of 
the doctrine, but to critically examine the grounds upon 
which it is based ; hence the interrogation mark, ?, in 
my heading, "A Future Life?" — indicating an "open 
question" — a question science may sometime or never ad- 
equately and satisfactorily answer. 

§ 61. — SOME "CRKDENTIAI^S" OK THE WRITER. 

This is quite personal, but I hope to be candid. Being 
from childhood a most inquisitive student of nature, and 
especially of the mind, I early and eagerly grasped every- 
thing which seemed to offer me assistance in solving my 
questions, especially in relation to mind, and I remember 
of being interested in phrenology when I was not more 
than six years old — introduced to me by my uncle using 
my head as a "phrenological bust" in illustrating his fire- 
side lectures on the subject ! This emphasized my taste 
for the study of mind, and in after years I read exten- 
sively the publications of Fowler & Wells, of New York. 

I first had my attention drawn to the phenomena of 
Spiritualism in 1853, when I was but ten years of age ; 
but, of course, made no serious attempt at investigation 
until several years later. In '60-1 I read one or two books 
on mesmerism, which interested me much. Soon after, 
while at home from the war convalescing from some of 
the dire results of war's strenuosity, in 1863, I obtained 
Abercro?nbie'' s Intellectual Philosophy, and studied it as as- 
siduously as a love-sick maiden would devour the "latest" 
novel. There I found the first discussion of "psychic 
phenomena" by a man of ability and education that I 



IS SPIRITUALISM A DEMONSTRATION ? 95 

ever read, and the impression it made upon me was deep 
and lasting- — even yet I discern it, though half a century 
has passed since I read the work. 

§ f)2. — SOME ** psychic" experiences. 

Before I had ever heard of "pS3xhic phenomena " some 
strang-e experiences came to me, and I will briefly relate 
three or four of them here because they formed a very 
important clue to m}-^ discovery, several years later, of a 
rational explanation of certain features of Spiritualistic 
phenomena. But at the time, I had given Spiritualism no 
serious attention, and did not attribute what happened to 
me to the intervention of '* spirits." 

I have since read and studied much upon hallucination, 
but these experiences differ from true hallucination in 
that they corresponded to, and seem to have been correla- 
ted with, reality — fact — , while hallucination is a subjec- 
tive perception not correlated with a corresponding objec- 
tive reality. Note this distinction as I relate the following 
incidents, which, however, cannot be justly explained as 
*'mere co-incidences," because of their regularity and ex- 
ceptionless concurrence, 

1. When I was about twelve years of age, one summer 
day I was playing" in front of our house very quietly and 
alone. Suddenly I heard whispered, apparently within 
tny left ear, the name *'Andy Buckalew." I then had an 
uncle of that name living", as I supposed, about 150 miles 
away. The whisper did not seem to come from someone 
at m}^ side — it was so entirely within the ear, and yet it 
was quite loud and slowly pronounced as one whispers to 
another some distance away. I was startled, and looked 
in every direction for the speaker, but at first saw no one. 
But looking- farther away, I saw two men approaching 



96 A FUTURE LIFB ? 

the house ; one of them proved to be my uncle Andrew, 
who had come unexpectedly. 

2. Not long- after this occurrence, another very simi- 
lar one happened. I was ag^ain sitting" on the g'round 
quietly playing- and alone. In my ear, exactly as before, 
came a loud, slowly-pronounced whisper of the name of 
a friend who then lived eig'ht miles away, but had just 
moved to that place from the neig-hborhood, 150 miles dis- 
tant, where I had formerly known both hitti and Uncle 
Andrew. He was Richard Moore, and the name I heard 
was "Rich Moore," a name by which his neighbors always 
designated him. Startled again by a whisper when no 
one was near me, I looked up and saw my old friend at 
the g'ate, some twenty feet from me, and he also had come 
unexpected by any of our family. 

3. Several years later, when I was about twenty years 
of age, one morning while at breakfast someone knocked 
at the door, and at the same instant came to me a whis- 
per so low that I can scarcely decide whether it was such 
or an exceedingly vivid intruding impression^ — one not 
correlated with my train of thoug-ht at the time. The 
name was " Uriah Reed," and when the door was opened 
a former schoolmate and playfellow of that name came 
in. He lived about twenty-four miles away, I had not 
seen or heard from him for some time and his visit was 
entirely unexpected. ■ - ..,^ ;; 

4. vSoon after this, I moved to a place about fifty' miles 
farther away from my friend's home, and about a year 
afterward he came again and called upon me entirely un- 
expected, and his presence at my door was announced al- 
most/exactly as before. 

There are three peculiar features of these phenomena: 
In each case the name only was heard or "impressed" 



IS SPIRITUALISM A DEMONSTRATION ? 97 

directly upon my mind without sound, objective or subjec- 
tive ; what was a loud whisper, apparently, when I was a 
child seeming"ly degenerated to an "impression" when I 
had grown up to manhood, and ofradualh^ almost, but not 
entirely^ ceased to occur as I grrew older; and these whis- 
pered or intruded impressions making* such announcments 
never occurred without being* succeeded immediately by 
the objective reality, as in the above incidents. 

In speaking of these " whispers," I wish to be under- 
stood that though I seemed to hear just as I hear real ob- 
jective whispered words, and could not at the time con- 
ceive of their being" an3^thingf else, I know now, after a 
g"reat deal of study and investig"ation of psycholog^ical 
facts and laws, the whispers were subjective perceptions 
by the mind ; that is, perception by the hearingf-center 
of the brain without an}^ sound-medium coming througrh 
the special org^ans of hearing — probabh^ somewhat as a 
wireless telegraph instrument "catches up" a message 
without the intervention of a wire; but I do not consider 
this analogfy more than crudely approximate. The inci- 
dents here g-iven do not cover all of m_v personal experi- 
ence of " psychic phenomena," but are such as are deemed 
the more relevant to the subject under discussion. 

§63. — STUDIES OF "spiritual PHENOMENA." 

" My first direct experience with "spirit manifestations" 
was about the year 1856 or '57. M}^ brother and two sis- 
ters (young-er than I) and m3^self, having- heard "table 
tipping-" described, from childish curiosity, tried it our- 
selves, and succeeded from the first. By first one and 
then another withdrawing- from the table, we discovered 
that my young-er sister, ag-ed about eight or nine, was the 
most "powerful medium "of the four. The cause of the 



98 A FUTURE LIFE? 

phenomena and this difference of mediumistic power were 
then to me inexplicable, but now the explanations appear 
very plain and simple to me, on the principle of subcon- 
scious mentation and muscular action of the "medium/' 
and the difference in contig"uity of conscious and sub- 
conscious, or objective and subjective, mentation between 
one person and another. Later, I shall discuss this basis 
of explanation more fully. 

In this discussion of Spiritualistic phenomena, I pro- 
pose to almost entirely ig-nore the doing-s of professional 
mediums as irrelevant, for or ag-ainst the doctrine, as the 
platform and cabinet performance is always either mere 
legerdemain or of uncertain character, and shall g-ive at- 
tention almost exclusively to such phenomena as occur 
when a few friends, or the members of a sing"le family, 
hold private seances for the purpose of sincere experimen- 
tation with the object only of learning- the truth. I will, 
then, merely mention that I have seen more or less of the 
rope-tying" feats and alleged "materialization," etc., of 
the profevSsionals, as early as 1864 and since. 

In 1868 my wife and I were one day standing by a table 
around which a party of neighbors were seated and trying 
to get a planchette to write. They were not succeeding, 
and someone suggested that Mrs. Davis try. She did not 
take a seat in the circle, but, standing behind one of the 
sitters where she could only reach the instrument conve- 
niently with her left hand, she placed that hand upon it, 
and in a few moments irregular movements began. After 
some minutes' trial, the movements becoming less con- 
vulsive, writing was produced, but only brief answers to 
questions and of no importance. That was the beginning 
of a quite thorough investigation on my part during the 
succeeding three years, for the most part at home with 



IS SPIRITUALISM A DEMONSTRATION ? 99 

only Mrs. Davis, our infant son and m3^self in the house. 
Occasionally others, Spiritualists or inquirers, were pres- 
ent ; sometimes the seances were at the homes of neig-h- 
bors; but there was never anything- done in the nature of 
a public exhibition, and no money was ever accepted. 

We had been married nearly four 5^ears previously, and 
I knew my wife would not intentionally deceive me in 
such a serious matter. She was about twenty-four years 
of agfe, in g-ood health, and of a cheerful disposition. In 
our experiments after the first, no planchette was used. 
We sat down by our table, laying our hands thereon, and 
quietly awaited results. 

When we went home from the above-mentioned seance, 
we resolved to experiment on our own account. At the 
first trial, the ** medium's" left hand soon beg^an to move 
automatically (reflexively, I think,) and convulsively, 
but soon became more orderly. I then placed a pencil 
in her left hand and sug-gested that the planchette was not 
necessary. After some spasmodic attempts, the hand be- 
gan to write, but only commonplace remarks. Then I 
asked, ** Who is doing- this writing? " " Ida May," was the 
answer; and from that on, the medium's personality when 
*'under control" was that of Ida May, g-enerally, with 
many interventions of other personalities, temporarily. 
The Ida May personality was not a mere claim of that 
name, but my wife of twent3^-four seemed transformed 
to a miss of twelve or fourteen. Though the left hand 
for some time did the writing, the "influence" g"radually 
extended to the entire body, when the facial expression 
would be decidedly changed — the cheeks more rosy, eyes 
more open, sparkling and *' mischievous " ^^ as we say of 
vivacious children); the laugh decidedly more childish; 



100 A FUTURE LIFE? 

the motions were quicker, the voice more child-like, the 
disposition more whimsical and frivolous. So that the 
appearance and action was so decidedly different that it 
seemed impossible for me to realize that "Ida May " was 
not a personal individual temporarily supplanting: the 
personality of m}'^ wife, and it seemed perfectly natural 
and appropriate that T raodif}^ my own manner and lan- 
gua.ge according"l3\ 

After quite a number of seances in which the writing- 
was done by the left hand, I sug-g-ested that it would be 
better to use the right hand; then, after some spasmodic 
and awkward attempts, the change was made ; the right 
thereafter was always used by Ida, but also by all other 
personalities who "controlled," thousfh the suggestion 
that the right hand could be used as weH was given onh^ 
to Ida May. Observing that the facial expression was 
greatly changed when the medium was "influenced" to 
write, I later suggested to Ida Mav that she could speak 
as well as write. Immediately there were visible spas- 
modic movements of the throat and mouth, then stam- 
mering and words spoken with apparent difficulty. But 
after a little practice, the personality calling herself Ida 
May conversed as fluently (and even more vivaciously) as 
did my wife's normal personality ; and she gesticulated, 
smiled, laughed, and varied the facial expression in ways 
not characteristic of Mrs. D. in her normal condition, but 
distinctly so of the Ida May personality. And these per- 
sonal characteristics of Ida were always as consistent and 
exceptionless as those of any normal personality, so that 
I soon became so " well acquainted " with her that I rec- 
ognized her as soon as she began to speak, without any 
necessity of her announcing her name ; and this personal- 
ity was so distinctive and persistent that I was compelled 



IS SPIRITUALISM A DEMONSTRATION ? 101 

to recogfnize her as a ferson — a brig'ht, sociable, pleasant 
little-g-irl visitor. And for several months she manifested 
this personality^ and posed as a "spirit" v^^itness while I 
asked her hundreds of questions— examined and cross- 
examined her critically, but alwa3^s assuming" that the 
Ida May personality was that of a little gfirl who died some 
time previously, although this was really an open ques- 
tion with me and the principal one I was trying- to solve. 
This assumption seemed necessary in order to maintain 
the continuance of the "control." In our experience we 
found darkness unnecessary — quietude was favorable. 

Many other personalities, each consistent with itself 
and distinct from the normal Mrs. D. and the other "con- 
trols," appeared from time to time after the first few 
weeks of experimentation ; but I give particulars of Ida 
May because that was the first, most persistent, decidedly 
typical and distinctly individualized ; nevertheless after 
others began to intrude this personality appeared less 
and less frequently until it ceased altogether — a very 
significant fact, 

§ 64. — RESUI.TS OF THK INVESTIGATION. 

First, I will say that I had always been a believer in the 
doctrine of immortality in the same sense that most peo- 
ple are ; that is, I had a kind of vague, misty belief, with 
a g"reat desire to find some evidence beyond the dicta of 
theologians and mystics. Inheriting- this belief, like 
many others, I of course was strong-ly predisposed to ac- 
cept the aspects of the phenomena that apparently con- 
firmed, and to reject or consider of doubtful validity those 
aspects which seemed to weigh against my belief — a dis- 
position natural to everyone, and this fact should be duly 
considered as influencing- my efforts to arrive at logical 



102 A FUTURE LIFE? 

conclusions, thoug-h I tried to keep prejudice in restraint 
and judg-ment unbiased as much as possible. 

As to the results of my experiments and observations 
in inv^estig'ating- the phenomena above described, I will 
note a few apparently incidental thoug"h very suggestive 
effects. 1. No information that could be otherwise sub- 
stantiated was ever received from the "spirit" except 
such as was at the time or previously Vwoww to the medi- 
um, myself or someone else present. 2. When a question 
was asked that would require an answer that would con- 
tradict some previous statement made by the same "con- 
trol "; or one was asked that the "spirit" should evidently 
be able to answer but the impersonating- personality could 
not answer, the "influence " ceased and the medium re- 
turned to her normal condition. For instance, one per- 
sonality professed to be the spirit of my uncle J — , who 
lost his life in the civil war. Q. Where were you when 
you died? Ans. " In front of Richmond." Q. At what 
particular place, or in what hospital ? A few spasmodic 
movements and the " spirit " was g'one. That answer 
was just what and all that I knew about where my uncle 
died. At another time I asked this same "spirit " if he 
knew where his brother T — was then living. Ans. " In 
Iowa." Q. At what place — what is his postoffice address? 
No answer, but confused motions of the pencil and then 
exit "spirit." I had heard that Uncle T — had moved to 
Iowa, but knew nothing as to what part of the State. 
These incidents are typical of many others. 

3. It was not necessary that the medium (who was 
always normally conscious during the manifestation) or 
myself, or others present, be thinking of a matter, or even 
to remember it, in order that a correct communication be 



IS SPIRITUALISM A DEMONSTRATION ? 103 

received ; it was sufficient that someone present knew the 
facts or had hnown them at some time, even if unable then 
to recollect them. This peculiar feature of the phenom- 
ena I expect to explain later in this discussion. 4, The 
answers to qu'^'^tion'^ ree-arding- the ** spirit world" were 
such as closely co-incided either with our beliefs or the 
theories of it by others which we had read or heard ; no 
really new information, or any that was not apparently 
a reflection of this life's conditions, was received about 
conditions "over there." 5. Notwithstanding- the fore- 
g-oing" suspicious concomitants of the manifestations, 
many who received messages were convinced that they 
had communicated with the spirits of their dead friends, 
or at least that the communications were true to facts to 
them known but to the medium unknown ; and they in- 
variably based their faith in the genuineness of the mes- 
sages upon the fact that they knew them to be true to the 
reality — which I expect later to show is one of the rea- 
sons for not accepting- such communications as tests, and 
is the basis of a part of the true explanation of the char- 
acter of all such communications. 6. The aggreg-ate 
result of all our experience and observation was that both 
Mrs. Davis and myself gave up the experiments as void 
of results as to evidence of the existence of "spirits" or 
of a future life, but for some time afterward considered 
the phenomena inexplicable. Later, I became able to ac- 
count for them all upon psj^chological principles — to my 
own satisfaction, at least. 

One little experience of my own I will add, as it has an 
important relation to the experimentation above briefly 
described. It might be objected that such automatic or 
reflex writing and speaking" never occurs, and that Mrs. D. 
was only pretending- to be "influenced." But in addition 



104 A FUTURE LIFE? 

to the evidence afforded by the changes in facial expres- 
sion and action and my wife's testimony (to me not to be 
called in question), I had the evidence of personal expe- 
rience. Some eig-hteen months after these investigations 
were begun, our little boy died, and being a precocious 
child and of exceedingly lovable disposition, his death 
was a loss that seemed to almost wreck my mind or even 
cause my own death. I thought of him almost incessant- 
ly, and often said, "If Charlie still lives, why can he not 
give some unmistakable token of it ?" One night while 
I was preparing for bed this thought passed through my 
mind with an overwhelming emotion. Just as I extin- 
guished the light and was in the act of getting into the 
bed, I felt a spasmodic twitching of the muscles of my 
throat and mouth, and then several involuntary attempts 
to speak. Of course I thought it was possibly the spirit 
of my little boy, and expected his name to be announced. 
At last just one word was spoken, and that was not Char- 
lie, but "Papa," as he always called me! I was astonished 
and almost convinced that my dear little boy had actually 
spoken a greeting word to me through my own mouth. 

That was the first and only time I was ever so affected. 
Almost any Spiritualist would say that it was a convinc- 
ing "test." There are two important aspects of this expe- 
rience : 1, It demonstrated to me that involuntary or auto- 
matic speech is a fact ; 2, the fact that the word spoken 
was not the one which I consciously thought of and ex- 
pected, shows that it was an expression of subjective or 
subconscious mentation. 

In my observations of the performances of platform 
"test" mediumship I will here mention the only incident 
of any importance wherein I was the recipient of the so- 
called test, as it will serve as a rather striking illustration 



IS SPIRITUALISM A DEMONSTRATION ? 105 

of the principle upon which one of the most "convinc- 
ing*" forms of communication is made by honest mediums 
and the rationale thereof which I shall presently offer. 

§65. — A REMARK ABLE PLATFORM TEST, 

In the winter of 1902-3, at one of the meeting's of the 
Los Angeles Liberal Club, a lad}^ medium stood upon the 
platform and undertook to demonstrate the reality of 
spirit communications. She seemed to succeed to the 
satisfaction of some and the bewilderment of others, and 
to utterly fail with some — as is usual in such cases. 

During" the performance I sat directly in front of the 
medium. I was wholl}^ unacquainted with her, never hav- 
ing even seen her before, to the best of my knowledge, 
and I am confident she knew nothing of my history or of 
my relatives ; and there were none of the audience that 
knew anything" about my deceased relatives, all of whom 
died many years before in "the East," as weCalifornians 
say — that is, in Ohio, Illinois and Michigran. After she 
had made several attempts in behalf of others, the medi- 
um suddenly said to me, "There is something: for you, 
but I cannot see distinctly who it is: grive me your hand." 
And she stepped down from the platform and gfrasped 
my hand, held it about a minute, and then stepped back 
a few feet, put her hand to her forehead for a moment, 
and said: "There is a lady standing- here who says she 
is your mother. Her name is Jane, and her message to 
you is, 'God bless you !' She says you have seven near 
relatives in the spirit world." 

This to many would have been a ver}^ convincing" test. 
1, my mother died some years before, a fact which I am 
quite sure the medium nor no one else present, but my- 
self, knew ; 2, my mother's name was Jane ; 3, seven near 



106 A FUTURE LIFE? 

relatives were dead — mother, father, brother, sister, and 
three sons — and this was unknown to all present except 
myself, and, 4, even /did not know objectively that there 
were just seven of them — I did not remember that I 
had ever counted them, thougfh I knew each was dead. 
But the emphatic messag^e, "God bless you," was not at 
all characteristic of my mother, for she was of a some- 
what skeptical and undemonstrative turn of mind, her 
religion was practical ethics, and I am quite sure that I 
never heard her make that expression ; but of my father 
it would have been eminently characteristic. 

How do I explain this communication of facts only to 
myself known bofore, if not upon the Spiritualistic hy- 
pothesis, or that of trickery ? I do not believe that the 
spirit of my deceased mother, or of any other dead person, 
had anything: to do with it, nor yet that the medium did 
anything" in the way of trickery or intention to deceive. 
The "communication" was from my own subconscious 
mind — mind below the plane of consciousness — throug-h 
the sub-coqscious mentation of the medium, a process of 
thoug"ht-transmission as compared with the ordinar}^ use 
of spoken or written words heard or seen objectively in 
some degree analag"ous to the process of wireless telegra- 
phy and voice-transmission as compared with transmis- 
sion by the use of a wire and the ordinary telegraph and 
and telephone. That such sub-conscious transmission 
and apprehension of unspoken thought is possible under 
certain necessary conditions, and is often actualized, I am 
led to believe after much study of the subject and experi- 
ence and experimentation. 

I am aware that many materialists, who have not in- 
vestigated the subject, pooh-pooh this theory, thinking 



IS SPIRITUALISM A DEMONSTRATION ? 107 

it to be a mere superstition belieyed in by over-credulous 
people only, and mistakenly thinking* that it is a spirit- 
istic notion ; but the theory is in no degree dependent on 
any kind of spiritism, and is as completely physical and 
materialistic as that of wireless telegraphy, the influence 
of the sun and moon in causing the tides, the attraction 
of the magnet or the phenomenon of gravitation. And it 
is no more mysterious, "occult "or rationally unbelievable 
than was ocean teleg-raphy a hundred years ago, or the 
telephone, wireless telegraph, electric light and power, 
only half a century ago ; and, I think, it will be as scien- 
tifically and practically demonstrable as any of these in 
the near future. I also know that some Spiritualists use 
this theory, or rather a similar one, in their attempts to 
explain the rationale of spirit communication, and to 
make it appear rational and scientific ; and that this has 
caused much of the prejudice of materialists and physi- 
cists against it. However, two principles of modern sci- 
ence oppose this use of the theory : first, the inadmissible 
use of a groundless assumption as a premise — the assump- 
tion that certain phenomena are caused by disembodied 
spirits; second, the inadmissible use of an occult, or un- 
usual, or bizarre explanation of phenomena that may be 
satisfactorily accounted for when attributed to known 
adequate causes and explained on simple, accepted prin- 
ciples. It is not the belief in any of the wonderful phe- 
nomena of nature that constitutes superstition, but belief 
in false causes of the phenomena. To believe in the ex- 
istence of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, storms, fires, 
floods, etc., is not superstition, and to attribute them to 
known natural causes is science and common sense ; but 
to attribute them to vindictive g"ods, "an angry God" or 



108 A FUTURE LIFE? 

a "mysterious Providence," above or "behind" nature, 
is g-ross: superstition. 

§66. — A STUMBI.ING-BI,OCK REMOVED. 

It may be asked, "If the alleg*ed communication was 
from your own unconscious thoug-ht [memory], how do 
you account for the un-characteristic message, 'God bless 
you'?" In this way : Memor}^ is of two kinds, conscious 
or active, and unconscious or passive. While one is think- 
ing" af something- that occurred in the past, the memory 
of the occurrence is active and conscious; during the time 
the occurrence is not being thought of, the memory of it 
is passive and unconscious. That this latter kind of mem- 
ory exists is proved by the fact that it may be aroused or 
called into activity and consciousness, an act we call recol- 
lection ; we often speak of such an act as "recalling the 
fact." Furthermore, this passive memory may become 
uncansciously active, as when one for instance, puts a let- 
ter in his pocket with the intention of dropping it into a 
mail box on his way down town, and falling into compa- 
ny of a friend mails the letter while his conscious thought 
is concentrated upon the subject of conversation, and af- 
ter the conversation ceases he suddenly recollects that he 
was to mail a letter and searches his pockets for it in vain, 
but after a considerable effort he dimly recollects of mail- 
ing it. This is an example of the reflex action peculiar to 
sub-conscious mentation— the "subjective mind," of Dr. 
Thomson J. Hudson — and shows how it is the basis of 
automatism. But this sub-conscious activity of memory 
is far from infallible, and often leads one to do the wrong 
thing" or commit a most ludicrous or disastrous act. For 
instance, one may speak to someone (say his own child) 
with whom he is perfectly well acquainted and call him 



IS SPIRITUALISM A DEMONSTRATION ? 109 

by the name of another person well-known to him. This 
liability of the sub-conscious active memory to error and 
confusion explains the mistake of the medium in saying" 
that my mother, instead of my father, said "God bless 
you." He always thus closed his letters to me, during- sev- 
eral 3^ears' separation, and that fact retained in my un- 
conscious memory was erroneously reproduced objectively 
by the medium — a quite natural confusion. And the fact 
that she mentioned this true characteristic of my father 
is circumstantial evidence that she got it from my subcon- 
scious memory ; and the fact that she attributed the re- 
mark to my mother instead of my father is only an inci- 
dental result of the above-mentioned liability to error 
and confusion of the passive memory being called into 
unconscious activity. The persistence of this unconscious 
activity of memory to the permanent exclusion of the 
conscious memory and power of normal recollection is a 
form of insanity, and hence the fallacy of insane thoug^ht. 
And hence the well-known tendenc)^ to insanity of medi- 
ums and so-called psychics who over-indulge in the exer- 
cise of this substitution of unconscious action for conscious 
action of memor3\ Herein lies the danger and evil of 
such practice. 

§ 67. — AN OBJECTION ANSWERED. 

In the above account I said that I did not consciously 
know that just seven of my near relatives were dead, 
until the fact was announced by the medium, and this 
may be urg-ed by some in objection to the theory that the 
communication was from my own mind and not from a 
disembodied spirit. Here is the explanation : 

The sub-conscious passive memory may retain facts 
once consciously known but objectively forgotten ; that 



110 A FUTURE LIFE? 

is, the mind has no associated facts to enable it to re-col- 
lect them, for all recollection is effected by means of asso- 
ciation — by "chains of associated facts." So that while 
I could not then remember that I had ever noticed that I 
had just seven deceased near relatives, I may really have 
done so at some time in the past, and this is not only 
possible, but quite probable. However, this probability 
is not the onl}^ explanation of this seeming: incongruity. 
There is another psychological principle that affords a 
positive basis of explanation. 

The mind is capable of performing not only simple but 
extremely complicated arithmetical calculations, even 
with astonishing celerity, sub-consciously. It is upon 
this psychic law that the so-called mathematical prodi- 
gies (as- the famous ^erah Colburn, for instance,) are 
able to perform their wonderful mathematical feats. In 
such cases the " prodigy " is wholly unable to explain or 
tell how he performs his solutions, because he is not 
conscious of any objective calculation, and the solutions 
of even very intricate problems are practically instanta- 
neous. Objective education does not improve this faculty, 
but the reverse ; and while it is more usual in childhood, 
it generally disappears more or less as the person grows 
older- These facts show the subjective nature of the 
mentation. Such prodigies are simply "psychics ;" that 
is, their minds to an unusual degree work sub-consciously 
instead of consciously. Having had this "faculty "to 
some extent in my boyhood years, I am more than ordi- 
narily able to realize the fact of its existence and under- 
stand its cause and modus operandi. But all I can say 
as to the kozu of my instantaneous answers to arithmet- 
ical questions which it was impossible for me to answer 
by deliberate calculation, is, that I answered impulsively 



IS SPIRITUALISM A DEMONSTRATION ? Ill 

— spoke the very first answer that came, flash-like, into 
my mind. Now, in the above instance I knew that each 
of the seven relatives were dead, and by a sub-conscious 
process I unconsciously g^ave the total as seven. 

This sub-conscious mentation is not confined to arith- 
metical operations; it is plainly apparent in music, art, 
poetry, real literature, eloquent oratory, true dramatic 
acting-, and all automatism. It is the basis of what has 
been erroneously called "intuition" and " inspiiw-tion," 
and is characteristic of " g-enius." Though it is often as- 
tonishingly correct, it is far from infallible. It is not a 
super-human "gift," or even a super-animal acquirement; 
for it impels and guides birds in their migrations and their 
nest building-, and the bees in their comb building-, queen 
raising- and honey storing-, etc. 

§ 68. — A CURIOUS SCIENTIFIC DEMONSTRATION. 

Arg-ument, definition and explanation are more or less 
convincing, but most people are " from Missouri" and de- 
mand that "you must show me''' to be convinced. I will 
now respond to the demand for a demonstration of subcon- 
scious mentation producing visible mechanical movement 
subjectively to objective auto-sug-gestion. You need no 
medium, or other person present to assist or deceive, nor 
any complicated or mysterious apparatus. I hope each 
and every reader will try this simple experiment : 

Take a thread about eig-hteen inches long- and tie one 
end of it to a heavy fingfer ring-, or any other convenient 
article of similar size and weig-ht ; retire to a room or 
place where you know no other person will intrude ; sit 
down, and hold the free end of the thread between the 
thumb and forefinger of the right hand and hold the 
hand above the forehead in such a position as will allow 



112 A FUTURE LIFE? 

the rinj*" or weig-ht on the thread to hang" level with 
and about ten inches from your eyes. Sit quietly a mo- 
ment with the eyes and attention fixed upon the weight, 
and say, as if speaking" to the little pendulum, "Swing- 
to the right and left, swing- to the right and left,'* repeat- 
ing the command over and over until the pendulum is 
swinging with long movements and as long- as you wish 
it to continue, holding (as you will suppose) your hand 
perfectly* still. Then change the command to, "Swing 
to and fro," repeating- as before. Then say repeatedly, 
"Swing around in a circle— around and around," repeat- 
ing often, as before. The pendulum will swing in each 
case in obedience to your commands, changing from one 
to the other without stopping ; and you will all the while 
be unconscious of moving- your hand, although that was 
just what you did to make the pendulum swing-! 

Notice these features of this experiment : The subjec- 
tive mentation obeyed the objective commands and made 
the hand to swing the pendulum thoug-h the objective 
mentation tried to prevent such movements. Apparently 
the pendulum was moved by the direct command, but 
it was really indirectly through your sub-conscious men- 
tation and your hand. This experiment ought to con- 
vince anyone that a medium may honestly believe that a 
"spirit" is moving- her hand to write when she is really 
but unconsciously moving it herself ; or that a "spirit" 
is directly tipping a table under her hands when she her- 
self is unconsciously tipping it with her hands. 

In conclusion, I find that all Spiritualistic phenomena 
are of "this world " only — "of the earth earthy" — and 
are not at all a demonstration (or even remotely in evi- 
dence) of the existence of spirits or of a future life. 



CHAPTER IX. 

ON THE SO-CALLLED PHILOSOPHY OP 
A FUTURE LIPE. 

§69. — DEDUCTIVE REASONING AS A MEANS OF PROOF. 

QUESTIONS that are not, or apparently cannot be, 
satisfactorily answered by direct observation and 
experimentation — that is, by the scientific method — are 
often supposed to belong* to another intellectual plane. 
Two such planes of mental enlig-htenraent are supposed 
not only to exist, but to be superior to those of common 
observation and experience and scientific observation and 
experimentation and induction. One of these is called 
the domain of religion — inspiration, or supernatural rev- 
elation and faith ; the other is that of transcendental so- 
called philosophy. In both of these domains the conclu- 
sion that man continues his personal and conscious life 
after the death and disintegration of the material body 
is, in the final step, reached by deduction. 

As to the arg"ument of the Christian theologians — the 
relig-ious evidence — it is based solely on certain declara- 
tions found in the collection of somewhat ancient writings 
called the '* Holy Bible." I have already discussed this 
phase of my subject to some extent, and will only say of 
it here that the claim that a knowledge of immortality 
obtained by or from a supernatural revelation differs from 
and is superior to, as to method, reasoning", is erroneous. 
The 'belief in a future life that is based on the te-stimony 

(113) 



114 A FUTURE LIFE? 

of biblical writers is the result of deductive reasoning-, 
thus : 1. The biblical declarations are those of an omnis- 
cient, infallible being", and are. therefore true. 2. One of 
these declarations is that man is immortal. 3. Therefore 
man continues to live after the death of his bod3^ This 
is reasoning-, and infallible // the premises, 1 and 2, are 
true. The denial of the truth of the conclusion is not 
rig-htly based on its being- obtained by other methods than 
those of reason, but that the freimses, one or both, are 
false^ and therefore the deduction is incorrect. 

In this chapter I shall examine some of the "philosoph- 
ical " argfuments in favor of the doctrine of immortality. 
But, as some readers of my preceding- discussions in The 
Humanitarian Rkvikw persist in thinking- that I am try- 
ing- to prove that there is no future life, I will here ag-ain 
interject a correction : The object of this discussion is not 
to prove the neg-ative proposition that there is no contin- 
uation of personality and consciousness after bodil}^ death, 
or even the af&rmative one that "death ends all," but is 
a critical inquiry as to the validity of the evidence and 
arg-uments upon which the past and present belief in the 
doctrine of post mortem life orig-inated, persists and is 
promulg-ated and defended. If the result is a knocking-- 
out of the false props, there are two available horns of 
the resultant dilemma : The reader can become an unbe- 
liever in the doctrine, or he can become ag-nostic and try, 
if so disposed, to discover a rock of science upon which 
not merely a belief in, but a knowledg-e of, such a life may 
be solidly erected. "The truth shall make you free ! " 

§ 70. — CONSENSUS OF THE WORI.D. 

One of the arg-uments often employed in defense of the 
doctrine of a future life is that which is called "the con- 



ON ^'PHILOSOPHY" OF A FUTURE LIFE. 115 

sensus of the world's opinion." It is assumed that what 
''everybody" believes must be true, even if the belief is 
only a " feeling:" that this or that is true without regard 
to objective facts. As a very gfood example of this arg-u- 
ment I will quote a parag-raph from the writing's of Dr. 
Samuel Johnson, as quoted approvingly by the spiritist 
author, William Howitt, in his "History of the Super- 
natural," vol. ii., page 132, as follows: 

'*That the dead are seen no more, I will not undertake 
to maintain against the concurrent and universal testi- 
mony of all ages and of all nations. There is no people, 
rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are 
not related and believed. ^ This opinion, which prevails 
as far as human nature is diffused, could become univer- 
sal only by its truth ; those who never heard of one an- 
other would not have agreed in a tale which nothing but 
the truth could render credible. That it is doubted by 
single cavilerscan very little weaken the geueral evidence; 

and some who deny it with their tongues confess it with 
their fears." 

The impotency of this argument may be easily demon- 
strated. Let us take Dr. Johnson's statement as a gen- 
eral form and apply the "argument "to the support of 
some old opinions now well known to be false. For in- 
stance, suppose that two hundred years ago a writer had 
said this as proof of witchcraft, substituting only the word 
witches for the words " the dead " and acts of witchcraft 
for "apparitions of the dead "in the above quotation; 
or someone in the days of Copernicus had used this argu- 
ment agaiast hin by sayin? the same thing about the 
earth being flat, the sun and moon rising and setting, etc. 
Or suppose a mediaeval writer had said this as to the ex- 
istence of were-wolves, etc. 

The truth is, that very often one man is ri^^ht and tlie 



116 A FUTURE LIFE? 

whole world wrong: on a given question. The "concur- 
rent opinion of the world " opposed Copernicus, Galileo, 
Bruno, Columbus, and many others whom we now know, 
to have been in the right. Opinion, even if universally 
concurred in, is but a delusion if facts do not underlie it, 
and the same illusion that establishes a false opinion in 
the mind of one man is extremely apt to do the same in 
the minds of many or even all men. 

§7l.^THE DKSIRK FOR IMMORTAI.ITY. 

It is often said that all men have an inherent desire for 
a continuation of their life beyond the death of the body, 
and that the Creator, or even nature, never implants in a 
being" an appetite or desire for anything that does not 
exist or is impossible of being acquired. But this is an- 
other case of a deduction being made from a false prem- 
ise. It is not a fact that there is an inherent or integral 
desire in man for a life specifically after death ; the in- 
herent desire is simply for a continuation of life — which 
leads men and brutes to obey "the first law of nature " — 
Self-preservation. The projection of this desire into the 
distant future is an abnormal effect of the inherent anti- 
pathy to death carried to excess under the stimulus of the 
reason in its ability to anticipate death as certain to oc-. 
cur at some time to all. That is, a superinduced desire, 
just as is that counterpart of it which leads to suicide. 
The brute and the infant human, not having reason de- 
veloped sufficiently^ to enable them to foreknow the cer- 
tainty of death at some time^ and that it will end both 
their pleasures and their pains, are satisfied with life in 
the present moment and exceedingly limited future, and 
hence they desire neither a future life to prolong their 
enjoyment of living nor death to curtail their sufferings 



ON ''PHILOSOPHY" OF A FUTURE LIFE. 117 

ing-, then, legfitimately pertains to bodil}^ life on earth. 

It has also been said that man cannot conceive of that 
which does not or cannot exist, at least as to its elements, 
and, as men do have conceptions of spirit, a spirit world, 
and a spirit life after death, these things must exist in 
reality. I answer that no man has ever conceived of these 
spiritual thing's except as mere variants of the material 
things of his experience. Spirit originates from air or 
breath ; the spirit world is conceived of as a" world,'* or a 
*' land," or a " city." The spirit life is but a counterfeit 
of this life. There are absolutely no specific spirit con- 
ceptions and no words in any language relating to spirit 
things which do not primarily relate to material things. 

§ 72. — NECESSARY TO COMPLETENESS. 

Many believers in immortality base their belief largely 
on the assumption that this life is a sort of probationary 
one, or a preparatory stage of an endless life, somewhat 
analogous to the foetal life as leading up to the far more 
advanced life following birth. They usually base this as- 
sumption on the apparent fact that man progresses in this 
life mentally or *' spiritually," but always falls far short 
of attaining that knowledge and perfection of character 
necessary to enable him to enjoy unalloyed happiness — 
which is assumed be the only goal that would justify the 
creation or evolution of man. These people argue that 
the wisdom that controls the universe could not fail in 
conducting any work once begun to completeness, and 
that the earth life falling far short of completeness is a^ 
proof that there will be a continuation after death to af- 
ford better conditions for completing the design of infi- 
nite wisdom in relation to mankind. 

There are some fatal defects in this reasoning, however. 



118 . A FUTURE LIFE? 

In the first place man does not invariably prog-ress on an 
upward scale throug-hout a full-length ph}^sical lifetime, 
mentally no more than physically. The progress of a 
man from conception to death is not in a straight line up- 
ward, but forward in a cycle — on a curved path or orbit 
from conception up through childhood to the zenith of 
manhood at middle-age and over and down through pro- 
verbial "second childhood " to death and dissolution — 
a process in no way different in kind from that of a plant 
in its progress through its lifetime from fecundation of 
the ovule up through the periods of germination, growth 
of root and stalk and blossoming to the meridian at seed- 
perfection, and down through the "sere and yellow leaf" 
to death and decay, when the entire plant, like the hu- 
man body, returns to its original state of minerals, water 
and gases composing portions of the inorganic earth — in 
both cases in completed cycles literally from "earth to 
earth" and from " dust to dust." 

Another unwarranted assumption in this "philosophy" 
is that happiness is the object of human life, whereas it 
is not an ultimate end, but a means to that end. So far 
as science has discovered the purposes, objects or ends of 
actions of living cells, organs, individuals and associa- 
tions, they are ultimately the maintainance of life by 
self-preservation, reproduction, maintenance of the young 
and reciprocal acts for the benefit of the whole, with pain 
and mental anguish as penal or coercive, and pleasure and 
happiness as reward or attractive means to guide to those 
proximate ends and that ultimate end. Mother Nature 
guides and directs her children, to the end that life on the 
earth shall persist, with a whip in her left hand and a su- 
gar-plum in her right ! And right here is the foundation 
of all government ; unconsciously men have imitated Na- 



ON "PHILOSOPHY" OF A FUTURE LIFE. 119 

ture inore or less perfectly in the family, the State, and 
all other asociations. 

As to man's conscious efforts, they are made under the 
illusion that pleasure and happiness constitute the ulti- 
mate end of all his voluntary acts. He does not eat and 
drink with the conscious purpose of supplying- his body 
with the elements of its sustenance, but does so to grati- 
fy his appetite — to afford himself pleasure ; copulation is 
not for the conscious purpose of reproduction, but for 
that of the gratification of the sexual desire — pleasure ; 
the maintainance of the family is not consciously to the 
end that human life may persist, but that conjugal love 
and the love of offspring may be gratified, affording" hap- 
piness.' 

Therefore the assumption that the ultimate end of life 
is not attained on this side of death is not well-founded, 
and the conclusion that another life is necessary to com- 
pleteness and the justification of the infinite wisdom that 
issupposed to control the progress of life and all other ac- 
tivities of the universe is not log-ically warranted. Even 
if true that there is an object of life still beyond the one 
science now finds to be the final, the facts to prove that 
truth are not in the theory above discussed. 

Furthermore, it is very doubtful if finite wisdom is jus- 
tifiable in assuming to decide what is or i^ not consistent 
with //^finite wisdom. 

§73. — "the law of compensation demands it." 

Much stress is often laid on the proposition that there 
is a natural law of moral compensation b)^ which exact 
justice must be sometime and somewhere meted to all 
men, and that it is plainly evident that this law is not 
fulfilled in this life, and therefore there must be a future 



120 A FUTURE LIFE? 

life where an exact balance of good ag-ainst evil will be 
attained — where those who had more than their due of 
the evils of life will be compensated with abundance of 
"gfood things," and those who enjoyed more than their 
due of the "good things" of this life will be compelled to 
sufiFer by torture their share of evil. This is the basis of 
the Christian's notion of heaven and hell, as lucidly illus- 
trated by the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. But 
many Spiritualists and other non-believers in the biblical 
gold-payed and walled-in heaven, and hell of literal fire 
and brimstone, still cling to a mild modification of those 
barbaric conceptions. 

It is argued that infinite justice demands such an oppor- 
tunity for the fulfillment of the assumed "law of compen- 
sation," and that the moral integrity of the supreme be- 
ing or power of the universe (whatever that maj^ be con- 
ceived to be) could not otherwise exist. 

From my point of view, this '* philosophy" is sophis- 
tical. First, I deny that there is such a natural law of 
moral compensation, as is demonstrated every day all 
around us. There is no such thing as morality — justice, 
mercy, etc. — in nature as considered apart from the re- 
lationship between living beings. Nature as ruthlessly 
tortures the morally innocent babe with disease or acci- 
dent as she does the " sinner" who is guilty of a lifetime 
of crime ; she brings into being the sensate rabbit, deer 
and song-bird, and also the merciless wolf, hawk and 
(in) human "sport" to mangle and torture them. The 
ancient declaration, confirmed by modern science, that 
the results of the parents' sins " are visited upon the chil- 
dren unto the third and fourth generation," itself proves 
the absence of morality or justice in general nature. 

Secondly, no amount of future good things can rectify 
past evils, or future suffering of one compensate another 
for his past sufferings. Death is the name of the "Great 
Judge" who balances all accounts. 



ON ''PHIIvOSOPHY" OF A FUTURE LIFE. 121 

§ 74. — THE DOCTRINE GOOD — TRUE OR EAI,SE. 

One arg-ument that devServes attention in this discus- 
sion is not properl}^ one for the truth of the doctrine, but 
for its utilit}^ regardless whether it be the true or a false 
doctrine. 

It is claimed, in an apologetic wa3^ that, if there be a 
future life, a belief in it is an incentive to the believer to 
so conduct his career throughout his present life that he 
will be " prepared " when the change comes to enter the 
new life on a higher plane and so from the first secure 
more happiness and endure less unhappiness therein, — 
and even if such places as the literal, "orthodox" heaven 
and hell do not (or will not) exist: and that this state 
of preparedness is highly beneficial to him and his neigh- 
bor in this life even if his belief is an error and death 
shall forever end his career. Also that the belief yields 
much comfort and affords the groundwork of a hope that 
stimulates him to achieve, and forms a silver lining to 
every dark cloud of adversity that ma}^ overshadow him. 
That should this hope be delusive and the dead believer 
never awaken to its realization, nor even to the discovery 
of his error, he would be none the worse off on account of 
the belief or the special exertions he had been deluded 
into making to prepare himself for a future life. Hence 
if the belief in a future life be or be not based on fact — 
be the doctrine true or false, its results are good. 

This argument carries great weight with many people, 
even among the intellectual, learned and liberal-minded. 
Some would say after reading my own above-statement of 
it that it is conclusive and irrefutable. But let us look 
closely and criticall}^ into the merits of this argument. 

There are certain moral maxims representing general 



122 A FUTURE LIFE? 

ethical principles which have received almost universal 
approval, and are recognized as not wholly expedient in 
all cases. Take this : "Always tell the truth." Almost 
everybod}^ endorses that as a sound g-eneral principle, yet 
in practice nearl}^ if not quite everybody finds it inexpedi- 
ent in exceptional cases. For instance, a mother lies in 
a critical condition of illness ; her little child, while cros- 
sing- a street, is crushed to death by a street car ; the 
physician says to tell the mother the truth now would 
cause her to die instantly from shock. Soon she misses 
her child, and says to the nurse, "Where is my baby ? — ■ 
bring" him to me — it does me so much good to see him at 
least once a day ; it is for his sake I wish and hope to 
get well again." Should the truth be told? An answer 
of some kind must be given. A falsehood is deliberately 
invented to suit the conditions. "O," replies the nurse, 
"we have sent him away to sta)^ with his auntie until 
you get well ; we can't give him proper care while you are 
sick." So in thousands of cases, yet Always tell the truth 
is a good general principle. The Golden Rule is also far 
from exceptionless, yet as a ^-enera I principle, is endorsed 
almost universally. So with "honesty is the best policy," 
"thou shalt not kill," etc., they are good general but 
not ujtiversal principles. 

The general principle, then, that truth is more benefi- 
cent than falsehood applies here to this question of a fu- 
ture life ; for while we may admit that there are certain 
cases of abnormal intellectual and moral conditions in 
which the truth as to a future life would not be benefi- 
cent, and therefore would be inexpedient, I think it must 
be admitted that as ^ general frincifle, applica-ble under 
normal conditions of intellectual and moral mentality, it 
would be not only safe but beneficent. 



ON ''PHILOSOPHY" OP A FUTURE LIFE. 123 

And there is another aspect of this objection to affirm- 
ing- the truth, if it be the truth, that death ends foreyer 
the conscious personalit)^ of the individual. It is this : Is 
it a fact that a belief in a future life, even if false, is an 
incentive, as a g-eneral rule, to ri^iiit living* in this life ? 
Is it not true that a very large portion of the energ}^ and 
time and money expended in the attempts to "prepare' 
ourselves, and induce others to do so, is entirely useless 
as related to achieving the most and best in this life, if 
there be no other ? — not only useless, but detrimental ? 
Granting that the supposed "prepared " believer " is none 
the v^orse off after death if death ends his career," is it not 
true that he is the worse off before death on account of 
misdirected effort— wasted time, energy and money ? For 
example, much time wasted in useless pra5^ing, exhorting 
others to specially prepare for death, in writing", printing 
and distributing literature in propagation of false doc- 
trines, to induce others to also waste their time and ener- 
g'ies in the same way ? And is not the daily life of man)% 
if not all, who consider themselves specially prepared for 
a happy life after death, far from the most beneficent 
possible for the individual and societ}^ in this life ? 

Much that is thought by believers in Christianit}^ to be 
essential as preparation for happiness in a future life is, 
I think, self-evidently absurd as means either to that end 
or to welfare in this life ; such, for instance, as beliefs in 
metaphysical dogmas, praying*, singing and acclaiming 
words of fulsome flattery to an unknown person supposed 
to be superhuman and supernatural — even if there be such 
a being — performance of mystical rites and ceremonies, 
etc. It appears to me to be more consistent to assume, 
since we know nothing of the conditions and demands of 
an}" possible future state, that that conduct which in this 



124 A FUTURE LIFK ? 

life most results in beneficence to the individual and the 
species — humanity — affords the very best preparation for 
entry upon any other life that may succeed this one. 

But, after all — granting- that there is some value in the 
special preparation for future existence when properly 
and sincerely made — it is at least an open question as to 
a haZ3% indefinite belief in immortality really influencingf 
the sincere conduct of people to any appreciable degree. 
Note that I say smcere conduct ; and by this I mean such 
as is directed to gfood ends because it is n^/^/and not be- 
cause one hopes to personally avoid the rod and secure a 
sug-ar-plum "over there." Daily observation and news- 
paper reading", and records of our courts and penal insti- 
tutions show that the criminal, the vagrant and the sen- 
sualist are almost if not quite every one believers in a fu- 
ture life ; that, too, with the special frills of an orthodox 
heaven and hell attached. On the other hand, those who 
do not believe in any post mortem reward or punishment 
or any kind of life after death, but who believe that con- 
duct brings its own rewards and penalties, promptly and 
invariably under immutable natural laws, are almost 
without exception people of strong- moral character, com- 
paratively blameless in their personal habits and social 
relations. The names of these people are not to be found 
in the criminal-court records and prison rosters with those 
of the eloping- pastor and his choir affinity, the proverbial 
defaulting "sabbath-school teacher" and the "devout 
Catholic" homicide who goes from the gallows to Para- 
dise on a special permit procured for him by a priest who 
claims to have a "pull" on the occupant of the judg-ment 
seat of the infinite universe ! 

Is there any reality as a basis for the claim that the be- 
lief in an after-life, even if a delusion, is beneficial in the 



ON ''PHILOSOPHY" OF A FUTURE LIFE. 125 

present life as a stimulant to zealous action for good, or as 
a comforter in time of trouble — an antidote for pessimism 
and nourisher of optimism? I answer that, if ever so, it 
is exceptional. Is it not a fact that such belief is so hazy 
and dreamy that it is as lig-ht as " airy nothingfness" so 
far as impressing our minds is concerned when we have 
them concentrated upon the common-sense, concrete and 
practical things and affairs of this life, or when storm- 
tossed by the waves and winds of adversity and sorrow? 
As a matter of fact, in my somewhat extensive acquain- 
tance with believers and disbelievers in the doctrine, I 
find the latter no less zealous, or even self-sacrificing, in 
good works, and optimistic and cheerful, than the latter; 
the chief difference being that as the unbeliever takes a 
calmer and more business-like view of life, he does not 
give way to fanaticism and waste his thought, labor and 
means on institutions and missions which give no reason- 
able promise of affording really beneficent results. 

Is it not true that millions of believers in a future life 
— the great unchurched majority who make no "profes- 
sion of religion," but who "hold to" the various church 
creeds as tenaciously as do the others — believe in the fu- 
ture existence, in the conventional walled-in 12x12 heaven 
and eternal hell of literal fire and brimstone, go right 
along day by day and 3^ear by year throughout their lives 
devoting their time and energies to this world with no 
effort to specially prepare for a future life? They carry 
this belief as they wear their coats, so completely accus- 
tomed to it that they are wholly unconscious that it has 
any weight. Even the most savage barbarians believe 
in a future life ; does their belief in the least moderate 
their savagery ? Of all men, scientists and and natural- 
ists are far the least confident of the truth of the doctrine 



126 A FUTURE LIFE? 

— almost universally ag^nostic if not avowed disbelievers 
in the doctrine ; and of all men they are as a class by far 
the most upright and least "materialistic" (in the bad 
sense of that word); no class of men so serenely meet ad- 
versity, endure deprivation, intensely rejoice in the con- 
templation of the this-world life they know something 
about, or more calmly and remorsely at last, 

* * * " when the summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan that moves 
To that mysterious realm where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 

* * -^ * 

* '*' * approach the grave, 
Like one who wraps the draper}^ of his couch 
About him and lies down to pleasant dreams." 

The reader should carefully note that I am not saying- 
that a well-founded belief — such as we call knowledge — 
in a future life, accompanied by some definite knowledge 
of its conditions and requirements, would not afford the 
good results, more or less, that are claimed for the present 
superstitious, vague one. Remember that in this discus- 
sion I am endeavoring to show that there is no really 
scientific basis for the doctrine of, or the belief in, any 
continuation or resuscitation of the conscious personality 
after the death and disintegration of the material body, 
to the end that critical inquiry and research by the modern 
science method— crucial observation and experimentation 
and careful logical induction from all the correlated facts 
possible to be obtained — may intervene and supply a real, 
demonstrable knowledge of the reality and conditions of 
a future life, or else such evidence of the nature of con- 
scious personality and the conditions upon which it is de- 



ON "PHILOSOPHY" OP A FUTURE LIFE. 127 

pendent as would prove life after death to be impossible. 
Mere belief is a house built on sand, and the occupant 
lives in continual doubt and fear that the floods come 
and destroy it ; superstitious faith is a castle in the air, 
and is the plaything- or victim of every wind that blows ; 
but real scientific knowledge is a mansion built on bed- 
rock, and the floods and winds may come but they can- 
not prevail against it. 

§ 75 — KINDNKSS SOMETIMES CAUSES PAIN. 

One objection that has been urged against any attempt 
to remove the false supports of the superstitious belief in 
a future life is that, if there really be no such life it is 
cruel and wrong to undeceive people who are happy in 
that belief while unconscious of its fallacy, because such 
awakening- gives them great mental pain before they be- 
come resigned to their fate as foreshadowed in an opposite 
belief. To this I reply : 

In this we should be governed as we usually are in the 
use of the Golden Rule and other moral maxims in every- 
day aifairs : i. e., supplement them with the Rule of Ex- 
pedienc)^ as explained above in the fifth parag-raph of 
§ 74. I may illustrate my meaning by examples from sur- 
gery and dentistry. In certain cases of mangled or dis- 
eased limbs the rule with surgeons is to amputate the af- 
fected part, and this involves infliction of pain and risk 
of death from shock or depletion ; but in some of these 
cases the condition of the patient is such that the surgeon 
refuses to amputate because he foresees that the patient 
would surel}^ die from shock or loss of blood. In cases 
of gunshot wounds, attempt to find and remove the bullet 
is the rule, though a painful operation ; but in exceptional 
cases this is deemed inexpedient. In performing- painful 



128 A FUTURE LIFE? 

operations the rule is to use an anesthetic, but in certain 
conditions it is inexpedient to do so. The dentist is in the 
same way g"uided by certain ^^eneral rvdes which are sup- 
plemented or supplanted under certain conditions by the 
rule of expediency. 

And so, I believe, under normal mental conditions it is 
rig-ht and proper to propag-ate the truth, whatever it may 
be, as to the question of a future life ; but in certain cases 
of abnormal mentality it may be inexpedient to do so, as at 
a death-bed, in cases of old age, insanity, imbecilit5% etc. 
But this is not the only truth that should be withheld un- 
der such conditions. In general, "the truth shall make 
[people] free." 



CHAPTER X. 

THE QUESTION OF FUTURE LIFE FROM 
THE SCIENTIFIC STANDPOINT. 

§ 76. — INTRODUCTORY — THE STATUS OF SCIKNCK. 

IS SCIENCE competent to g"ive a final and conclusive 
answer to the question of a future life ? Have sci- 
entists discovered laws of nature that establish either the 
certaint5vor the possibilit3% on the one hand, or the non- 
existence or the impossibiHt5^ on the the other hand, of 
a continuance or a revival of the conscious personality 
after the death and disinteg^ration of the human body ? 
Have the}^ discovered any facts that indicate eveti the 
probabilit}^ or the improbabilit}^ of a future life? 

Theologians often assert that "our boasted science " 
is at best no more reliable than "faith," because much 
that was accepted" as scientific truth yesterday is rejected 
by the scientists themselves today, and that probabl}^ 
much that is accepted today will be rejected tomorrow. 
To this T re pi 3^ : 

'' There' are several factors of what is popularly consid- 
ered to be science. 1. Certain hypotheses — generaliza- 
tions accepted tentatively ; 2. Certain speculative theo- 
ries — mixtures of conceptions of what is and personal 
opinion of what ought to he ; 3. Certain principles or 
laws of nature which have been obtained by inductive 
reasoning- from all the related facts that observation and 
experimentation have ever afforded, and which harmour 

[129J 



130 A FUTURE LIFE ? 

ize or correlate so completely as to appear indispensable 
to the present order of nature. It is the 1st and 2nd phases 
of science that chang-e from time to time as new facts are 
discovered ; but strictly speakingf these two so-called fac- 
tors of science are not science at all, but belief — faith — 
as science is knowledge ; so that it is not our science (3) 
which changfes and is unreliable, but our belief — "faith." 
Hypotheses and theories, belief and faith, are temporary 
makeshifts that we adopt in lieu of such science as we 
are not as yet in possession of. 

Two men are traveling- upon the plains of Arizona; one, 
S, an experienced plainsman, the other, B, not so. They 
are without water and painfully thirsty. Off to the left 
of their course they see what appears to be a beautiful 
lake of limpid water ; to the rig-ht they see a rang-e of 
brush-covered hills. B wishes to turn to the left because 
he believes there is a lake of water in that direction ; but 
S wishes to turn to the rig-ht because he knows there is a 
spring- of pure water in a canyon of those hills. They 
arg-ue, and B becomes angary and insists that S may be 
wrong-, but that he believes there is water upon the left, 
and so they part ; S turns to the rig-ht, B to the left. At 
leng-th S reaches the spring- in the hills. He slakes his 
thirst, bathes his tired feet in the little stream from the 
spring-, rests a few hours, fills his canteens with water, 
and returns to the trail. He sees nothing- of B but his 
tracks in the hot sands. He must try to find B, suppl}^ 
him with water and g-uide him back to the trail. Many 
hours he follows B's wavering- tracks. He finds B's coat, 
a little further on, his hat, then his shoes, and at last B's 
dead body stretched upon the sand, with hands reaching- 
toward the fateful mirag-e! This is no baseless fancy, 
but an illustration drawn from hundreds of realities. 



FROM THE STANDPOINT OF SCIENCE 131 

When we know, we should act according-l}^ When we 
only believe, we should not be satisfied till we know. And 
when we only believe we know, w^e should continue our in- 
quiry until we know that we know! That is science. 

But as long" as we are unable to acquire positive knowl- 
edge upon any question we are justifiable in adopting- a 
theory or hypothesis that is to the greatest degree sup- 
ported by correlated facts, but such acceptance should al- 
ways be tentative. 

In considering the question of a future life, then, we 
may not only accept real scientific principles as conclu- 
sive, but well-supported hypotheses and theories in pref- 
erence to mere belief based only or chiefly on dogmatic 
statements of others who have no actual knowledge upon 
the subject, no matter how great their number, or upon 
illusory, very limited or superficial observation. But we 
should never accept such theories or hypotheses as con- 
clusive — only as indicating possibility or probability. 

Four branches of naturallscience are specially related to 
the question of a future life : physics, chemistry,, physi- 
ology, psychology ; and I will discuss the question from 
the standpoint of each in this order. But in doing this I 
shall lay little stress upon the personal opinions, pro or 
con, of scientists as to the main question, because we all 
know that even scientists are influenced by their feelings 
and desires, inherited beliefs, suggestion, and popular 
opinion, in matters of a supposedly "religious" nature. 
What, then, is the view from the standpoint of science ? 

Part I. — From the Mechanical Point of View. 

§ 77. — THE ANATOMICAI. MECHANISM. 

Physically, the human body is a mechanical apparatus 
composed of a very complex aggregation of correlated, 



132 A FUTURE LIFE? 

reciprocating' and interdependent mechanical structures 
called tissues, organs and systems. There are solid levers 
with hing-es and lubricated bearings, various receptacles 
and tubes or pipes for holding* and conve3nng liquids and 
semi-solids and g"ases — air and carbonic acid ; and there 
are spring's and connecting'-rods, screens, pumps, heating 
apparatus, cooling devices, conductors (nerves), genera- 
tors or batteries and dynamos (ganglions, spinal cord, 
cerebellum and cerebrum) analagous to our electrical ap- 
paratuses ; there are cameras with lenses, stops, shutters, 
sensitive films, developers and fixers (memory); there are 
acoustic devices, valves, chemical apparatuses (glands), 
cutting tools, grinding mills, etc., etc. When any of these 
parts of the grand machine are broken, deranged or worn 
out, they fail in part or wholly to do their proper work 
and, more or less, derange all the other parts (disease), 
and when injury is very great or the whole machine be- 
comes worn out it wholly ceases to produce any of the 
results which it was apparently designedly adapted to 
produce (dies) and decays. 

§ 78. — WHAT OPKRATKS THESK MACHINKS ? 

I have discussed this phase of the subject somewhat 
in the sixth chapter, and hence I will in this place only 
brieflv supplement that discussion with a short definite 
statement and an illustration from inanimate nature. 

It is said that "a machine cannot operate unless it is 
supplied with power from an external source and is con- 
trolled by an intelligent operator distinct from the ma- 
chine itself," but this is a narrow view of the subject. We 
must take a more comprehensive view of nature — include 
art and artisanship and man himself as parts of nature, 
his acts all natural, and therefore all of his so-called arti- 



FROM THE STANDPOINT OF SCIENCE 133 

ficial productions, including" all machines, products of 
nature. Every movement, every act, of man is a natural 
sequence of an infinite train of movements or acts extend- 
ing- back in the eternal past, under the law of the correla- 
tion of modes of motion. So a man-made machine is not 
a product of mind as an "uncaused cause," but of a chain 
of causes and effects inevitably and necessarily leading" 
up to — determining- — both its invention and construction, 
and then its operation. 

In this broad view we see that any tool or machine is 
but an addition to man's organism, an evolution of a sup- 
plementary part, or^an or system. A pick and shovel are 
but an evolution of the fing-er-nail and hand ; a knife, of 
the incisor teeth, a flouring mill, of the molars ; a micro- 
scope or a telescope, but a supplementary org-an of sig"ht, 
the telephone, an evolution of the org"an of hearing", etc. 
But, says the objector, these tools and machines are pro- 
ducts of man's free will and intellig-ence, while his bodi- 
ly organs are involuntary productions of the vital princi- 
ple. But this is another narrow view. Granting", for the 
present, that there is such a thing" as "the vital principle," 
in a broader view we see that the machine is equally a 
production of "the vital principle," for it first produced 
the brain and hand that produced the machine. We do 
not sa5^that the square, saw and hammer builds a house ; 
we g"o back of them one step, but the physicist stops not 
at one step — nor two, nor a million ; his broad view shows 
the house to be the production of an infinite series of an- 
tecedent causes. So the "man-made machine " is only 
man-made in a narrow sense, and the so-called vital prin- 
ciple is itself only a proximate cause, an effect of antece- 
dent causes. 

Do you say that a machine cannot be devised and con- 



134 A FUTURE LIFE? 

structed without the intervention of a "free will and in- 
telligfence?" But can this boasted " free will and intelli- 
g-ence " devise, adapt means to ends and construct a brain 
that can perform purposive acts ? Why, skilled biolog"ists 
have so far failed to produce, by their "free will and in- 
tellig-ence," even a single organic cell or a pinch of proto- 
plasm, much less a brain-machine capable of producing 
the phenomena of "free will and intelligence!" No, 
apparent free will, intelligence and the human hand are 
Nature's means to an end — her square, saw and hammer ! 

§ 79. — II.I.USTRATION.S FROM INANIMATK NATURE. 

If we admit that a personaj, conscious intelligence is 
necessary to operate the machine called the human brain, 
we must admit the same for the heart, stomach, liver 
and other machines of the system, for they all do pur- 
poseful work ; and also of all plants and plant organs. 
Yes, and in the inorganic world systematic work is done 
by nature's machines. What is the earth-globe daily re- 
volving upon its axis to produce day and night, and an- 
nuall3^ sweeping around the sun with its axis inclined to 
the plane of its orbit to produce the seasons, but a great 
machine ? Does a spirit operate it?, and when the earth 
ceases to revolve, like the moon, and is cold in death or 
returned to the disintegrated nebular condition, will that 
"disembodied spirit " continue in "a future life ? " 

Another example from inanimate nature : The hea^t of 
the sun evaporates the water of the ocean, which is then 
absorbed by the atmosphere above it ; the globular form 
of the earth and the variations of temperature with the 
change of the seasons, caused by the inclination of the 
earth's axis to the plane of its orbit while encircling the 
sun, produces such extensive movements of the air as to 



FROM THE STANDPOINT OF SCIENCE 135 

carry the vapor over the land where contact with cold cur- 
rents condenses it and then it falls as rain to the g-round, 
for the "purpose" of irrlg-ating veg-etation ; channels are 
provided, having- a downward slope to the ocean, so that 
the water may be returned to again be evaporated. This 
is a grand irrigating plant — means wonderfully adapted 
to ends, apparently purposively — ing-enious, complicated 
machine in constant operation ! Does an intellig"ent per- 
sonality operate it ? and when this material machine is 
worn out, or dies, will its spirit g-raduate into, a "hig-her 
future life" ? If so, the pagan's rain-god is no myth ! 

But what has all this to do with the question of a fu- 
ture life of man ? Let us see. 

§ 80. — THE CONCLUSION FROM FACTS OF PHYSICS- 

If the human body is a machine, or a system of corre- 
lated machines, as believers in a future life affirm and 
non-believers generally do not deny, from the facts that 
such machine operates because of the laws of the persis- 
tence — indestructibility and uncreatability — of motion 
and the correlation and transmutability of the modes of 
motion, as a link in an infinite chain — series — of causes 
and effects, not from any uncaused cause — force, mind, 
spirit or soul entity — within, behind or over it, it follows 
that there is absolutely nothing of this machine except 
matter in motion in the modes we call life and mind, and 
that when this machine dies its peculiar modes of motion 
are transmuted into other modes, and so as vital and 
mental modes wholly cease. 

From the standpoint of physics, therefore, we can see 
no evidence that the phenomena of the human brain, or, 
strictly speaking, human org^anism (brain and body be- 
ing- interdependent), which we call the mind and the per- 



136 A FUTURE LIFE? 

sonality, continue after the disintegration of the body. 
At the present stage of this branch of science, there are no 
known facts or principles that indicate that such a future 
life is probable or even possible ; but physics, like other 
natural sciences, is in a state of active evolution, and it 
would be only presumption to say that facts and principles 
of physics may not yet be discovered that would reverse 
this view, and equally presumptions to assume that such 
will be the case. We must accept it at present in its pres- 
ent status, not as we imagine it may be in the future. 

Part II. — From the Chemical Point of View. 

After discussing so fully the relations of physics to the 
question of a post mortem life, I need but remark briefly 
on the chemical aspect, the two sciences being so closely 
related to each other. 

§81. — CHEMICAL CONSTITUENCY. 

All bodies in nature, organic or inorganic, living or 
non-living, of which our senses take cognizance, upon 
careful analysis are found to be constituted of one or more 
substances which are considered to be " simple elements" 
because chemists, in a vast amount of experimentation 
and critical observation, have never been able to anal3^ze 
them — separate them into even two components — nor ob- 
serve their formation by a union of other substances. 
Of such are oxygen, h5^drogen, carbon, calcium, silver, 
gold, etc. Compound bodies are composed of these "ele- 
ments" combined in one of three ways : mechanical mix- 
ture, as the air ; chemical combination, as water ; and 
organic growth, as living tissues of plants and animals. 
There is, however, no definite line of distinction between 
one of these ways and another, just as the line between 
plant and animal life is indefinite. Though generally 



PROM THE STANDPOINT OP SCIENCE 137 

the three methods are plainly distinct, in some cases they 
seem to merg-e by imperceptible gradation. 

§ 82. — THE LAW OF CHANGE. 

One great, universal fact relating to the constituency 
of material bodies (inorganic as well as organic) is, that 
they are all unstable — subject to disintegration ; and an- 
other great universal fact is, that, after disintegration of 
any body of matter, the separated particles or elements 
re-integrate to constitute other bodies^ more or less endur- 
ing- but also unstable. This disintegration and re-inte- 
gration is action under the great Law of Change, and on 
this depends the phenomena of the universe, from the ro- 
tation and revolution of the heavenly bodies to the trans- 
mutation of forms of bodies and modes of motion. By 
this great law of change suns and planetary systems are 
constructed from nebulous matter — disintegrated matter 
of preceding suns and planetary systems — and by it they 
are disintegrated into nebulous matter, crude material for 
the buildingf of succeeding suns and systems — ''world 
without end ! " As well, by this law of nature inorganic 
matter yields its non-living forms and becomes organic, 
living plants, and these yield up their elements for use 
in building living animal tissues ; and by it the animal 
tissues, including those of man, are disintegrated to form 
inorganic food for plants, and so round and round goes 
on the birth, life, death, disintegration and resurrection 
of matter here on earth, and every day is a "day of judg- 
ment — i. e., a day of readjustment. 

No, our bodies do not only become food for grass when 
we breathe out the last breath, but literally "in the midst 
of life we are in death," for with the first expiration of 
the new-born infant goes out of its body a quantity of 



138 A FUTURE LIFE? 

carbon that a moment before was an indispensable con- 
tituent of its living- body; and that carbon has not only 
been disinteg-rated from tissue or cell combination, but it 
has been re-integ-rated by a chemical compact with oxy- 
gfen and formed carbonic acid, a gas which mingles with 
the air ; away it floats, like a "departed spirit," which it 
truly and literall}^ is, until it comes in contact with a blade 
of grass or leaf of a tree, when it is disinteg^rated and 
the carbon is made a constituent of plant tissue, which 
later is eaten by beast or man — literally re-incarnated! 
Taking the g"reat, pre-eminently basic chemical element 
of all living- beings, carbon, as the "soul," we have a 
real, scientific "re-incarnation," " transmig-ration of the 
soul," "reg'eneration"or "new birth," "resurrection," etc. 
May it not be that these theological mysteries are, after 
all, vague and dreamy subjective recognition of the great 
facts of nature now being objectified by inductive science? 
As in literature — poetry and fiction — and in art, there is 
always necessaril}^ a basis of elemental facts, so in meta- 
physical and theological systems there must necessarily 
be basic facts even though but dimly perceived, for man 
is not a creator — he cannot "make something out of no- 
thing " — not even a fallacious theory or a false doctrine. 

Briefl3% it is a well-established fact that all chemically 
complex bodies, of two or more elements, are unstable and 
under varying- environment disintegrate and enter into 
new combinations, forming- new bodies of matter ; and as 
a general principle, the more Complex the agg-regation 
the more unstable it is, and org-anic compounds beingf ex- 
ceedingly complex are very unstable ; and hence the very 
life activity itself is but an incessant and rapid chemical 
decomposition and recomposition of tissue. The human 
body, then, as an individuality, during life is really a 



FROM THE STANDPOINT OF SCIENCE 139 

Hg"htning"-like succession of individualities, just as the 
human species as a whole during- its entire race existence 
is a slower succession of these complex individualities, 
of an averag-e duration, say, of thirty years. 

The sum of the activities of the g-rand man, humanity, 
correspond exactly to the chemical and physical motions 
inherent in and inseparable from its constituents — per- 
sons — and the sum of the activities of each of these race- 
constituents (persons) corresponds exactly to the inherent 
chemical and ph^^sical motions or activities of its organs, 
cells, corpuscles, molecules and atoms; and the sum of 
the activities of the g-rand man — the race — is no less and 
no more a "soul" capable of separation from and exist- 
ence independent of its chemical constituents than is that 
of the individual or person. Indeed, there is today in 
London, Engf., a sect called the "Church of Humanity " 
which holds as a creedal doctrine that the race has a soul, 
and its members pray to that race soul as a superior per- 
sonal beings — "the true and living- God"! 

§83. — MAN CHIEFI^Y WATKR. 

The human body, apparently so solid, is chiefly water, 
consisting- of about 7 pounds of water to every 3 pounds 
of solid material ; that is, about 70 per cent water. At 
the same temperature that water is a liquid, its compo- 
ents, oxyg-en and hydrog-en, when not chemically united 
are both g-ases ; so that were the water in a man's body 
to be suddenly disinteg-rated, he would immediately be- 
come 70 per cent g-as. And I am here tempted to say, 
by way of diversion, that, apparently, this most dire ca- 
lamity often occurs! — politicians and preachers being 
especially predisposed to the disease ! 

Water is the only inorg-anic substance which animals, 
including- man, directly assimilate ; all other elements of 



140 A FUTURE UFE? 

nutrition — substances that enter into the construction of 
the living" tissues — must first be raised by plant life from 
the domain of inorganic matter up into the domain of or- 
ganic matter. Air is no exception to this, for it or its 
components, oxygen and nitrogen, do not become any 
part of living" tissue ; v^^e breathe in order that the oxy- 
gen of the air may chemically unite with the carbon in 
the venous blood that it may be, in the gaseous state (as 
carbonic acid gas), readily eliminated from the living 
system. The "spirit" (etymologically, the breath,) of 
man, v^hich it is said "God breathed into his nostrils" to 
make him "a living" soul," and v^hich "ghost" man "gives 
up" forty times every minute while he lives, is, then, on- 
ly a vehicle of ph5^siological sewage. 

§ 84. — CHEMISTRY OF THE PI.ASMA. 

The essential substance of all living things, vegetable 
and animal, called the -plasma is constituted of chemical 
elements, but combined in proportions never found in in- 
organic nature, and, so far, beyond the skill of chemists 
to effect experimentally. This plasma varies somewhat 
under different conditions, but in general the plasmic 
substances consist of what are called "the five organo- 
genetic elements," combined in about these proportions 
by weight : Carbon, 51 to 54 per cent ; Oxygen, 21 to 23 
per cent ; Nitrogen, 15 to 17 per cent ; Hydrogen, 6 to 7 
per cent ; Sulphur, 1 to 2 per cent. 

These elementals uncombined are, solids, two — C. and 
S.; gases, three — O., N, and H. ; no liquids. Yet the 
product of the combining process, plasma, is neither a 
solid nor a gas, but a semi-liquid or jell3^-like substance, 
of which the white of an ^^^ is a good example. This 
change of state resulting from the combination, points 



PROM THE STANDPOINT OF SCIENCE 141 

directly to the fact that plasma is not a mere mechanical 
mixture of the five elements, but a product of chemical 
combination. That it is not a product of a "vital force" 
sui generis^ but chemic, is shown by the fact that this 
chang-e of state as a result of union is a phenomenon com- 
mon in inorgfanic combinations, as is illustrated by the 
chemical combination of the two gases, oxyg^en and hy- 
drog^en, resulting- in the formation of the liquid, water. 

Other chemical elements than the five org"anog"enetic 
elements of plasma enter into the formation of living- tis- 
sues, as calcium, phosphorus, etc., but they may be con- 
sidered as auxiliaries of the plasmic substance, important 
but not essential to life action. 

§ 85. — THR VERDICT OF CHEMISTRY. 

Do the facts and principles of chemistry above consid- 
ered, or an}^ others known to chemists, prove that there 
is any "spirit" or "soul" entity or personality connected 
in an}^ way, either as cause or modifying- influence affect- 
ing" the chemical actions or reactions, with the material 
structure of plant, brute or human ? No. All the struct- 
ural chang-es within living- org-anisms are accounted for 
upon the g-eneral principles of chemical action in the do- 
main of inorg-anic matter, modified only by the peculiar 
conditions essential to the manifestation of life. Does or- 
ganic chemistry confirm the theory that "nothing- is ever 
destroyed, therefore man must be immortal"? Not at 
all ; but on the contrar)^ chemistry proves that no body 
of matter constituted of two or more indivisible atoms is 
stable, but finite in duration under the law of chang-e. 

To illustrate : I am now before a case of type ; let each 
letter represent an atom of a chemical element. I pick 
up one and then another and unite them so as to spell the 



142 A FUTURE IJPE ? 

words on this page ; atnotig" them is, say, the word g"od, 
but after printing" the page I disintegrate the word b}^ 
distributing the type back into the case. The word god 
as a combination of type-letters has been destroyed. I 
then set another page from the same case of type, and in 
doing so I pick up identically the same types I had used 
in the word god, but arrange them differently and so as 
to spell dog ; again I use the same types but add another 
o and produce the word good. So things as we know 
them in composite bodies of matter, inorganic or organic, 
are not only destructible, but of necessity they 7nust be de- 
stroyed that others may be formed from their elements. 
Let Ithis destruction in nature cease, and the universe 
would stand still — be an infinite petrification. 

Yes, we die, as chemistry demonstrates, not that we 
may live again, but that others may live. 

Does chemical science afford any facts or principles in 
support of the doctrine of a future life, either by resur- 
rection of the body or the disembodiment of an immortal 
spirit, or by re-embodiment of a disembodied soul ? Not 
one. Chemistry takes absolutely no cognizance of any- 
thing that even suggests the indestructibility of anything 
but the elementary atom, or the probability or possibility 
of a future life after final death of the body. 

Part III.— From the Physiological Point of View. 

That branch of biological science which relates to the 
actions peculiar to the various anatomical organs, tissues 
and cells of living plants and animals, physiology, may 
at first sight appear irrelevant to the question of a post 
mortem life, but T think it can be shown to embrace very 
important facts and principles bearing strongly upon 
the subject. Let us see. 



PROM THE STANDPOINT OP SCIENCE 143 

§86. — NATURE OF PHYSTOI.OGICAI. FUNCTION. 

Each org"an, tissue and cell of a livingf being- is evi- 
dently adapted, more or less perfectly, to the performance 
of work for the well-being* and perpetuation of itself , the 
individual (as a co-operative community), and the race 
or species (a more comprehensive co-operative commu- 
nity whose units are the aforesaid minor communities, the 
individuals). No matter how much we differ as to what 
is the cause of this adaptation, or as to its being the re- 
sult of intelligent design, it exists apparently as purpo- 
sive effort. Take, for instance, the leaves on a tree : to- 
gether with one another and the trunk, branches, roots, 
etc., they constitute a co-operative community, and the 
interdependence of the leaf, trunk and root is so great 
that no one of these members can long continue to live 
without the co-operative work of all the others. The leaf 
is so constructed that it is adapted to its atmospheric 
environment, the light of the sun, constituents, contents 
and movement of the air, apparently, at least, by intelli- 
gent, purposive design, so that it "works" not only to 
build and maintain its own individuality but also that of 
the entire tree. In fact a real altruism seems to exist, 
for the root seems to work chiefly in collecting materials 
from the soil for use in constructing the trunk and the 
leaves; the leaves seem chiefly concerned in extracting 
carbon from the air for the building of the trunk and the 
roots, and the chief uses of the trunk seems to be to sup- 
port the leaves high in the air and sunlight and connect 
the leaf and the root with each other to make their co- 
operation possible and eminently practicable. Then there 
is the flower and the seed : the leaf, root and trunk unite 
in the work, apparently as the chief purpose of their ex- 



144 A FUTURE IJPE ? 

istence, to produce flowers and seeds ; the flower is de- 
voted almost entirely to the perfecting- of the seed, and 
this reciprocates by devoting- its work to the starting of a 
new community-individual tree in order that the commu- 
nity-species may continue and increase. 

And so with all living things throughout nature. 

§ 87. — PHYSIOLOGICAI, AUTOMATISM. 

The popular belief that matter is "dead," inert, except 
when impelled to move or act by an invisible, mysterious 
" force" entity or "spirit" entity within, "behind "or 
"back of " it, is a fallacy arising from a misconception of 
the nature of cause and of motion. The true conception 
is that matter is never inert, and is always in motion ; 
that motion cannot be destroyed, suspended or "diffused 
in vacant space" ; and motion cannot be initiated or cre- 
ated. What appears to be a cessation of motion or the 
beginning of motion is only the cessation or the begin- 
ning of a Tnode at the time of a transmutation from one 
mode into another. Hence physiological action is not 
caused by any "vital force" entity, but is a mode of mo- 
tion resulting- from a transmutation of the physical and 
chemical modes in which the living matter moved before 
it became living matter, while as yet inorganic. This 
transmutation occurs because of changed conditions, just 
as a man apparently voluntarily changes his modes(meth- 
ods) of activity under different conditions —"suits his 
action to the circumstances," as he says. 

Living cells, tissues and organs (including the human 
brain), therefore, perform their functions as they do sim- 
ply because the matter of which they are composed cannoi 
cease to act and so changes its modes of action into physi- 
ological functioning- in conformity with the conditions 



PROM THE STANDPOINT OF SCIENCE 145 

and its adaptation to them. No m3^sterious invisible be- 
ingf or vital force is needed to "cause" them to act, or to 
be hypothecated to account for the performance of their 
proper functions. 

§ 88. — THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ULTIMATE. 

A physiolog-ical function, then, of any orgfan, tissue or 
cell, is that special work it is adapted to do, and does 
perform by virtue of its particular organization and influ- 
ence of heredity and environment ; and it may be stated 
concisely, as a logical generalization of the known facts of 
comparative physiology, as a biological principle or nat- 
ual law of life, that the object of all functional activity is 
the construction and freservation^ first, of the acting or- 
gan, tissue or cell ; second, of the individual of which it 
is an anatomical member ; and third, of the species — in 
procreation and care of offspring. And another gener- 
alization of much significance in connection with this is 
thus formulated by Professor Ernst Haeckel in his Fif- 
teenth Thesis : "All vital activities — inclusive of the psy- 
chical or 'soul' functions — take place according to the 
laws of physics and chemistr5%" as I have stated in § 85. 
And a third great physiological generalization equally 
well founded on the known facts, is this: All functional 
activity — including the consciousness of pain and pleas- 
ure, suffering of sorrow and enjoyment of happiness, and 
the horror of death and desire to live, and even the hofe of 
a continued existence after death — is adapted to and nor- 
mally results in the production and preservation of life 
here on earth as we objectively know it, so that we are 
justifiable in concluding that the ultimate end of all life 
activity — physiological function — including thought, is 
bodily life : a progression by revolutions, as in all other 



146 A FUTURE LIFE? 

departments of nature. 

§ 89. — DOES THE BRAIN THINK ? 

It has been said that the brain does not and cannot of 
itself think ; "the mind or spirit uses the brain as a me- 
dium for the manifestation of its thought ; it is prepos- 
terous to say that mere matter can think; the brain is 
merely a convenient but not indispensable tool of mind 
or spirit." So say the believers in human dualism. Let 
us step by step through comparison approach the ques- 
tion, Is thinking- a physiological function of the cerebral 
brain — thought a result of brain functioning? 

The result of muscular contraction is bodily movement ; 
the result of salivary and gastric secretion is digestion of 
food ; the result of the alternate expansion and contrac- 
tion of the chest is respiration, and of that, decarboniza- 
tion of the blood ; the result of the glandular action of 
the liver is the removal of deleterious waste matter from 
the blood and making of it a useful intestinal lubricant ; 
the result of the muscular action of the heart and arteries 
is the circulation of the blood ; the result of the contrac- 
tion and expansion of the pores of the skin by variations 
of temperature is the maintainance of an even and proper 
v^armth of the body ; the result of the action of the iris of 
the eye, b}^ v^^hich the pupil is expanded and contracted, is 
the regulation to some extent of the amount of light that 
enters the eye ; the result of the action of the sensory 
nerves is the merging of sensory impressions in centers 
of perception to form the basis of consciousness ; the re- 
sult of the actions of the spinal cord, medulla and cere- 
bellum, is the regulation and unification of the various 
physiological activities of the entire system. And the 
physiologist conceives of all these results being brought 



FROM THE STANDPOINT OF SCIENCE 147 

about by the action of the organs named, not by the ac- 
tion of invisible, mysterious, immaterial being-s through 
them as negfative mediums or hy them as instruments. 

But let us take one more step : the result of the action 
of the cerebrum is — what ? Does Nature here reverse 
herself, and after constructing- a system of co-operatingf, 
automatic org-ans, build one more of far g-reater excel- 
lence, placed like an autocrat on a throne over them, and 
debase it to the position of a mere "convenient" but "not 
indispensable" tool of a beingf hidden, like the manipu- 
lator of Punch and Judy, "behind" it? Or is Nature 
consistent, so that, as with the other org-ans, we may say 
that the cerebral brain itself acts automatically to bring- 
about a result for the well-being- of itself and all the other 
co-operating- members of the community constituting the 
individual, and so also of society and the species ? Then, 
shall I continue the list in normal order and say : the 
result of the action (thinking-) of the cerebrum is thought? 
That it is a very complex org-an, and receives impressions 
throug-h the org-ans of sense which it combines and trans- 
mutes into not only intellectual thoug-ht, but also senti- 
ment and emotion? And these — are they "thingfs,"or 
are they not really modes of motion, as are sound, heat, 
ligfht, electricity and mag-netism ? If so, they are effects 
of complex causes liable to, and by the natural laws of 
correlation and changfe surely destined to, dissolution ? 
And with destruction of the cause, the effect ceases to be 
produced. No cerebral brain, no functions of emotion, 
sentiment or thoug-ht. Just as, no eyes, no seeingf; no 
feet, no walking-; no wing-s, no flying-; no gflands, no 
secretions; no sensory nerves, no feeling-; no sensory 
unifying- center, no consciousness — are all physiolog-ical 
truisms, so, to the unprejudiced mind, no cerebrum, no 



148 A FUTURE UFE ? 

thought, emotion or sentiment, is also a physiologfical 
truism; and without these, there is no personality. 

It has been said by way objection to the physiological 
principle that the several anatomical members each acts 
automatically in and of itself, b}^ virtue of the potency of 
the molecular and other motions of its constituents mod- 
ified by their peculiar relations to one another in the or- 
ganism and to their external environment, that the evi- 
dent purposive adaptation of means to ends in the struc- 
ture and functions of these parts necessarily implies the 
existence of an intelligent designer of them. 

Though this is a mooted question, I will here assume 
that such a designing intelligence does exist ; but I reply 
that such entelligence must of necessity itself be a com- 
plex organization of the primary elements of intelligence 
because the relative position in the scale is based on the 
principle that the *' higher" the living being the more 
complex and intricate its constituency and vice versa, and 
as the creator must be superior to (higher than) its crea- 
tion, this designer must be even more complex than the 
material organism, and therefore destined by the laws of 
correlation and change to dissolution — death. 

All of the known physiological facts support the gen- 
eralization that all of the phenomena of life, from those 
of a single cell to those of the human cerebrum, are de- 
termined by the adaptation of structure to its environ- 
ment, and that when that adaptation cannot be main- 
tained, the phenomena all end — which is final death. 

If the destruction of the cerebral brain is inevitably fol- 
lowed b}^ annihilation of the consciousness and the per- 
sonality, as physiological science certainl}'- teaches us, 
a post mortem future life would be impossible. 



PROM THE STANDPOINT OF SCIENCE 149 

Part IV. — From the Psychological Point of View. 
§90. — WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY? 

PSYCHOLOGY defined etymolog-ically : a discourse 
upon the butterfl}^ ! — from the Greek logos, word or 
discourse, and -psyche, a butterfl3\ Herein is disclosed 
the Greek (and incidentally the New Testament) concep- 
tion of 'the nature of the supposed human soul, and also 
the fallacy of the analogical reasoning- upon which the 
doctrines of its existence and its resoirrection were, in a 
large degree, founded and defended. The man was lik- 
ened to the larva ("worm of the dust") of the butterfly 
or any moth ; his body in the grave was likened to the' 
chrysalis of the butterfly in winter awaiting its resurrec- 
tion in the Spring ; the soul of man was likened to the 
mature butterfly, resurrected as a beautiful winged being 
and perfectly happy in its care-free and serene baskings 
in the glorious sunshine of summer — " in the light of the 
countenance of the Lord of heaven," the sun ! Beautiful 
as poetic fancy ; but as science or philosophy, it is fatally 
defective, for the larva does not die when it enters its 
winter tomb to await as a living chrysalis its resurrection 
at "the end of the world " (year). The larva that actu- 
ally dies, as man dies, never becomes a chrysalis, much 
less a butterfly ; and the chrysalis that dies and decays 
as a man's body disintegates in the grave never becomes 
a butterfly. 

There is, however, real analog}^ between the life of a 
man and that of a butterfly, but it contradicts the doc- 
trine of the soul and its survival of bodil}^ death. Man as 
a foetus — a child before birth — is in a stage analogous to 
the larval and chrysalic stages ; when he reaches the ad- 



ISO A FUTURE LIFE? 

ult ag"e he has reached the butterfi}^ stag-e, before death, 
not .after it — the mature stage in which both butterfly and 
man perform their reproductive functions, after which 
man and the butterfly alike prosaically and actually die ! 

But the Greek ^ov&s, psyche and logos have, in the evo- 
lution of human speech, become amalg^amated and modi- 
fied so as to form the English word pschology, with the 
modern meaning- of science of fnind. The only defect I 
can see in this definition is that it is premature — the sci- 
ence of mind is as yet only in the chrysalis state. For 
this reason I give li1;tle credence, on the one hand or on 
the other, to the testimony of the "old" or "orthodox" 
psycholog"y. But some progfress is being made in mind- 
investigation, and the real scientists have arrived at the 
truth that psychology is not a unique, independent gen- 
eral or generic science, but a sub-science — only a branch 
of physiologry. As such, I have already quite fully dis- 
cussed its bearing's on the question of a future life in the 
sections criticising- Thomson Jay Hudson's hypotheses, 
those under head of "The Physiological View," and in- 
cidentally in other sections here and there. Hence, little 
need be said here of the psychological view ; but I think 
there are yet a few points deserving- of attention. 

§91. — THE SUBSTANCE OF MIND OR "sOUL." 

Elsewhere in these papers I have maintained that the 
"substance" (that which stands under) all the phenom- 
ena of the universe is matter in motion; and that no spir- 
it, energ-y or force entity is needed to "cause" the activ- 
ity of matter, org-anic or inorganic, because its activity 
is incessant — can be neither initiated (created) nor anni- 
hilated — the apparent beg-inning* and ending of activit}^ 
being* in reality transmutations of the modes of motion 



FROM THE STANDPOINT OP SCIENCE 151 

from one into another. Mind is a phenomenon of nature, 
a part or mode of the cosmic activit}'^ ; therefore, under 
m}^ definition of the substance of the cosmos or universe, 
the substance of mind (or "soul") is matter in motion. — 
Mind is a mode of activit}^ resulting* from a transmuta- 
tion from other antecedent modes and disappearing by 
transmutation into other succeeding" modes of activity. 
Activity in the aggregate never begins or ends ; but the 
modes of activity do constantly begin and end, constitut- 
ing the varied phenomena of nature. Mind, or soul, is 
a mode of activit3^ and has beginning and ending — be- 
gins at transmutation from the heat, electricity, chemic 
and vital modes of brain tissue as a result of brain-tissue 
disintegration b}^ means of ox3^gen, and ends by trans- 
mutation into the various modes of activity which are 
the results of desire, design, etc. Hence, in this light, 
it appears impossible that the existence of individualized 
mind could be eternal, or continue even a moment after 
the dissolution of the brain ; or that mind could exist in- 
dependent of its " substance," matter in motion. 

§ 92. — PvSYCHIC REVELATIONS. 

Certain persons, forming an inconsiderable exception 
in the totality of the race, have claimed special powers 
of psychic discernment independent of the material or- 
gans of the specialized senses, and of late have assumed 
the class cognomen of "pS3xhics." These psychics are 
persons in whom the subjective, or reflex, mentation is 
abnormally merged into the objective mentation. I say 
"abnormally," because this merging of the two modes 
of mentation to a certain extent is normal and common 
to all mankind. For instance, take memory. You ob- 
serve a certain object or occurrence toda}^ and for some 



152 A FUTURE LIFE? 

minutes afterward you consciousl}^ keep in your objective 
thought an imagfe of the thing- or the occurrence ; this 
is purely objective or conscious memory. At length you 
cease thinking of — that is consciously retaining the im- 
age of — the object or occurrence, but tomorrow you may 
again form an image of the object or event, which new 
image is re-collected memory — you will then say "I recol- 
lect it." We cannot collect or re-collect that which no 
longer exists ; hence that which we can recollect must 
still exist — that is, the mental image (memory) of an ob- 
ject or event exists subconscionsly up to the time we re- 
collect it. This is subjective or subconscious memory, 
and is entirely a product of the objective mind's im- 
age, not of direct observation — that is, of ^'suggestion"; 
and such subjective image or subconscious memory has 
nothing whatever to do with the truth or falsity of its 
relation to objective reality. It never "goes back of the 
returns" supplied to it by the objective mentation. If 
the original conscious image is false to fact you will re- 
collect a falsity from the subconscious memory when you 
again consciously remember it. And association of innu- 
merable subconscious images or memories results in more 
or less confusion or intermingling in the course of time, 
so that a recollection of things or events observed a long 
time previously is never quite true to the original image; 
we "get things mixed," as we say when with difficulty 
trying to recollect something of the long ago. Even our 
dreams — subjective images formed while asleep — often 
become mingled or confused with images that had come 
from objective observation, and we are sometimes unable 
to decide whether a certain recollection is true to fact, or 
whether we "just dreamed it." 

Now for the application : The images re-collected by 



FROM THE STANDPOINT OF SCIENCE 153 

the professed psychics or so-called seers are but re-collec- 
tions of subconscious images (memories) orig-inally re- 
ceived by sug"g:estion from the conscious thought of the 
the psychic himself or that of others. That is, the psy- 
chic "revelations" are but reflections of the conscious 
opinions, beliefs or theories of the psychic, or persons — 
authors, speakers or friends — who have made forcible im- 
pressions upon his subjective mentation ; briefly, they are 
reflex thoughts, opinions and images or mental pictures. 
I have arrived at this conclusion from a pretty thorough 
study of the writings of two of the greatest of the seers of 
modern times, Emanuel Swedenborg and Andrew Jack- 
son Davis, confirmed by observation of lesser lights and 
my own personal experience. 

Swedenborg is a wonderful example of reflex thinking 
from autosuggestion. He was a man of more than ordi- 
nary intellectual ability, by both nature and education ; 
he was a devout Christian, but his strong, educated intel- 
lect balked at the contradictions, inconsistencies and ab- 
surdities of the Bible and the orthodox Christian religion, 
and he became a unique heretic. But for the mistake of 
placing confidence in his psychic "visions," he would 
have been a radical Rationalist. As it was, the sugges- 
tions of early religious teaching and much reading of the 
Bible were mingled and confused with the autosugges- 
tions of his enlightened objective intellect, resulting in 
re-collections, by an abnormal assertiveness of his sub- 
conscious mentation, in mongrel "visions" which he mis- 
takenly accepted as " revelations" of spirit-world reali- 
ties. His pictures of Jesus as God, of Heaven and Hell, 
of the Great Judgment, etc., were painted in the colors 
of early training mixed with the oil of a great intellect 
and applied with the brush of a wonderfully facile and 



154 A FUTURE LIFE? 

prolific literary talent. And on the sandy foundation of 
that mistake has been erected a church — "Church of the 
New Jerusalem," a Christian sect of a considerable num- 
ber of adherents. 

Andrew Jackson Davis was a psychic who began when 
an illiterate boy by abnormally reflecting- the sugges- 
tions of a mesmerizer who experimented upon him, and 
who unconsciously imparted to him the substance of his 
earlier visions and recorded thera as they were re-collected 
and "revealed" objectively by his subject. Swedenborg 
founded a system of Christian theology ; Andrew Jack- 
son Davis founded what he called " The Harmonial Phi- 
losophy," an effort to systemize a philosophical Spiritu- 
alism ; both of these seers claimed to have obtained the 
alleged facts upon which they founded their systems by 
personal observations in the spirit world ; but the alleged 
facts of the one contradict those of the other, and there- 
fore one or the other was mistaken — probably both. The 
"Heaven and Hell" of Swedenborg is far different from 
the "Summerland" of A. J. Davis, and the theology of 
the one is utterly inharmious with the " philosophy" of 
of the other. And so with all the revelations of all the 
other psychics or seers, from Mohammed and John the 
Revelator to the spiritual mediums of today. 

The descriptions they profess (often sincerely) to give 
of life "over there" are, I am convinced, obtained from 
suggestions they have subconsciously accepted over here. 

§ 93. — KNOCKING DOWN A MAN OF STRAW. 

It is easy to mis-state an opponent's argument and 
then demolish the counterfeit. Over and over, I have 
heard and read the statement that the "materialist says 
that mind is the product of the brain — the brain secretes 



FROM THE STANDPOINT OP SCIENCE 155 

thoug"lit as the liver secretes bile"! This chargfe can 
come only from one either very ig-norant or brazenly dis- 
honest, for no v^^ell-informed believer in the theory that 
mind is the function of the brain, and thought, emotion, 
sentiment, etc., are brain products, would assert that the 
" brain secretes thoug-ht as the liver secretes bile." Kv- 
er3^one who knows even the a-b-c's of ph3^siology knows 
that the word "setretion " is a name for only one class of 
phyFiolcg-ical functions — the functions of certain g-lands 
and membranes. The brain is neither a gland nor a 
membrane; the products of secretion are fluids or semi- 
fluids, but mind and thought are neither of these. 

Physiological functions are many and extremely varied 
in character, and the same is true of physiolog-ical pro- 
ducts. Note the extreme dissimilarity between muscular 
motion and nerve sensation ; between seeing and hear- 
ing" ; between breathing and mastication ; between secre- 
tion of milk and the act of smelling, etc. Compare the 
products of functioning : saliva with locomotion ; fat or 
oil with a feeling of pain or pleasure ; bone with blood ; 
brain with finger-nails, etc. It would be just as log-ical 
to say that the eye secretes sigfht, the muscles secrete mo- 
tion ; the tongue secretes speech, "as the liver secretes 
bile," as to say "the brain secretes thought as the liver 
secretes bile." 

To my mind it is no more mysterious or improbable that 
thought is a product of brain than that the sense of touch 
is the product of sensory nerves ; or, than that the move- 
ment of my arm, hand and fing-ers in setting- this type is a 
product of muscle in combination with motor nerves and 
brain. No: although mind is a function of brain and 
thougfht a product of that function, the brain does not 



156 A FUTURE LIFE? 

"secrete " it as the liver does bile, and that product, bile 
is no more like thought than it is like muscular motion, 

§ 94. — ANOTHKR BASBLKSS OBJECTION 

Is this ; " Immediately after death the brain is in no way 
different, organically, physicall}^ or chemically, from its 
condition immediately before ; if thought is a product of 
brain, why does not the brain continue to think after 
death, if the mind or soul has not left it ? " There is no 
mystery here. First, it is a mere assumption that the 
brain structure is exactly the same immediately after as 
as it was before death ; no chemist ever analyzed, and no 
microscopist ever peered into, the living cells of a think- 
ing brain, and therefore no exact comparison of it with a 
dead brain can be made. Second, soundness of the brain 
structure is not the only condition of thought production; 
oxygen must be present to disintegrate the brain structure, 
for thought, like all other physiological products, is a 
sequence of cell-dissolution. The surest — an infallible — 
way to extinguish thinking and consciousness is to sto^ 
the breathing — and death always does that ! 

After the flame of a candle "goes out" because oxy- 
gen of the air has been shut off from it, the candle itself 
remains as before, yet no light is produced. Is it not 
as logical to ask what becomes of the flame and its light 
when the "candle goes out" as to ask what becomes of 
the soul^the mind and its thought when the body dies ? 
Furthermore, every other organ and function of the body 
yields a frodiict of some kind ; in compliance with this 
law, what does brain and brain action produce if not 
mind, including thought, sentiment, emotion etc.? 



CHAPTER XI. 

SOME MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS. 

§96. — "weighing the soul." 

TEN THOUSAND years ag-o, more and less, the 
inhabitants of the Valley of the Nile had in their 
wonderfully complicated and systemetized mythologry or 
relig-ion a symbolical representation of the gfods weigfh- 
ing" on a balance the human soul after the death of the 
body. In this case the soul's existence was not ques- 
tioned, the weighing" being- for the purpose of determin- 
ing- the moral status of the soul — a detail of the "Great 
Judg-ment." But in this modern day certain doctors, self- 
styled scientists, more familiar with the weigfhingof mal- 
medicaments than of morals, have undertaken to weig-h 
the soul for the purpose of proving- its existence. And 
they report that their experiments in weig-hing- a larg-e 
number of dyingf persons determine that "something-,' 
weig-hing- an ounce, more less, "escapes" from the body 
at the exact moment of death, and that not having- been 
able to detect any loss of the known bodily constituents 
at the time, they conclude that the "thing" which seems 
to "escape" is the human "soul"! 

This log-ic reminds me of some boys who once went out 
to hunt "winged bunnies," mythical animals described 
in a story book and said to hide in hollow logs during the 
day and come out in the evening to fly out of sight high 

[157] 



15S A FUTURE LIFE? 

up in the sky. They found a hollow log- about twenty 
feet long", and peering into one end they could see nothing 
within, nor see light through the hollow though the hole 
was open at both ends of the log. Says one : "That's a 
migfht}^ good place for a winged bunnie to stay in in day- 
time," So they g-ot a long pole and tried to dislodg-e the 
beast they had decided oug"ht to be within. They saw no- 
thing- come out of the log-, but now (having- dislodged the 
obstructing rotten wood with their pole) they could see 
through the hollow log. So they went home and told 
their boy friends how they had proved that there were 
real "winged bunnies," for they saw no other animal run 
out of the bunnie-house, while "something-" seemed, un- 
seen, "to escape" — it could only be a real, though a very 
lig-ht-weig-ht, "wing-ed bunnie"! 

These doctors have "proved" too much for a certain 
larg-e number of believers in the existence of soul-entities. 
Their experiments on animals showed that "nothing" 
escapes from their bodies at death — therefore they do not 
have souls ; and, ag-ain, their discovered "fact" that the 
soul has weight "proves" that it is of. material substance, 
which is "rank materialism"! Incidentally, I observe, 
their experiments "prove" the Christian belief correct, 
that the soul has wing-s; for, having weig-ht, how could 
it otherwise ascend to the heaven in the skies? 

I can scarcely res st the great temptation to say here 
that the report that the soul weighs only an ounce or two 
seems to confirm common observation that many people, 
if they have any at all, have ver}^ " small souls " ! 

§ 96. — THE EVASIVE EXPLANATION. 

In the discussion of the question of immortality there 
has been adopted b}^ some an explanation that, to my 



SOME MISCELLANKOUS MATTERS 159 

way of thinking-, is simply an evasion of the real issue — 
an explanation which all accept in its true sphere, with- 
out relinquishing" their belief or disbelief in a conscious 
personal future life connected by memory with this life. 

This explanation is a favorite one with some who have 
been forced by facts and reason to g"ive up their belief in a 
literal future life, but who wish to avoid giving- a shock 
to the prejudices of the g-reat majority by a plain, uneva- 
sive, unequivocal declaration. The motive may be com- 
mendable, but science, like nature, which it represents, 
is severely and unfeeling-ly exact, and sets forth the ab- 
solute truth utterly reg-ardless of consequences. The sci- 
entist inquires as to what /5, not merely as to what g-ives 
him no pain. The dying- philosopher says to his physi- 
cian, "Tell me truly, is this death?" He does not ask for 
an equivocal or palliative reply; he does not want to be 
merely assured that "there is no death" — his common 
sense as well as his science teaches him that death is as 
real as are birth and life. He knows that the simple acts 
of daily self-abneg-ation in man's association with man 
which we call ethics and etiquette are but expressions of 
the great biolog-ical law that one must sacrifice some of 
his self-interests, including- his life, that another ma}^ live. 
And he bravely and -politely steps aside and lies down in 
the g-rave to g-ive standing--room for his brother. 

The evasive answer to the g-reat question is, in brief, 
this: "We are immortal; all our acts will continue to 
affect the weel or wo of humanit\^ forever : we shall con- 
tinue to live in the memory and affections of our friends 
and posterity, if deserving." This, as I understand them, 
is the kind of "immortalitj^" which Dr. Paul Carus, of 
of the Open Court and the Monist, believes in, and my 
friend Prof. Thaddeus B. Wakeman "knows" is the only 



160 A FUTURE LIFE? 

future life, as he says "correlation" proves — for he as- 
sures me that " a little more 'correlation' might save you 
[me] from agnosticism." (See his letter in the Humani- 
tarian Rkvikw for July, 1907). 

Though this is one definition of the word immortality, 
it is not the primary meaning of the word, but a second- 
ary — poetic — one, or a mere rhetorical figure of speech. 
It does not answer the real question persistently asked by 
the prosaic, matter-of-fact scientists and common-sense 
millions. They ask : 

"Does the personality, the conscious identity and the 
memory of the events and the friendships of this life con- 
tinue or sometime revive after the death and disintegra- 
tion of the material body?" And they demand a posi- 
tive, unevasive, unequivocal, unmabiguous and sincere 
answer — Yes, No, or Unknown — with the facts and prin- 
ciples upon which the answer is based equally explicit. 

As the judge upon the bench says : "Gentlemen of the 
jury, what is your verdict ?" What is the answer in this 
case? Some of the jurymen would answer "Yes," some 
"No," vSome, "We are in doubt," but the foreman is 
bound to formally answer, regardless of his own personal 
decision, "If Your Honor please, the jury fails to agree." 
We have heard the "Yes" and the "No" to this ques- 
tion, with the reasons ; let us now hear the "Unknown." 



§ 97. — THE AGNOSTIC VIEW. 

It may be laid down, I think, as a true general principle 
that he who knows most knows how little he knows, and 
he who thinks he knows much has not learned how little 
he actually knows, .The wise man is modest; the fool 
is deceived by his own ignorance and his egotism. Es- 
pecially rare is knowledge of what the future may bring 



SOME MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS 161 

to pass. No person knows, even, that the sun will rise 
tomorrow as usual ; for aught we know it might ere that 
time explode and be rent into impalpable "star-dust," its 
volume expanded far be^^ond the earth's orbit» 

Much that we say we know is rightly so expressed if 
it is conditional. We can onl}^ judge of the future by the 
past; that which has hitherto invariably occurred in the 
field of human observation in the past we know will un- 
der the same conditions occur in the future, and we may 
rightly say we know that a certain event will occur if we 
include the provision of the essential conditions, for con- 
ditions are laws of nature. To say every event occurs in 
conformity to natural law is only to affirm that they oc- 
cur according to essential conditions. 

What do we know about conditions essential to a con- 
tinuation of the personality after bodily death ? Do we 
know that such conditions exist ? — or that they do not 
exist ? Does our realm of observation and experience in 
this life embrace every realm of existence in nature ? If 
not, can we know what may or may not exist outside of 
the field of our observation and experience ? Have we 
discovered all the laws of nature ? Or have we learned 
the limitations of all the laws we have discovered ? 

What is agnosticism ? Many of its opponents ridicule 
agnostics as people who acknowledge they know nothing. 
Such a charge can come only from one who is ignorant 
of the modern meaning of the word — that is, of the limi- 
tations of its application as used by those who profess to 
be agnostic — or from one who is dishonest and unfair to- 
ward his opponents in argument. I define the word ag- 
nosticism thus: The belief that mankind can and does 
know nothing as to what may or may not exist omtside of 
the field of its experience and observation ; that what we 



162 A FUTURE LIFE? 

learn by reasoning- is but a g^eneralization of facts within 
our observation and experience and deductions therefrom. 
Hence the agnostic rejects the dogma that man can, does 
or ever did, obtain any knowledge by inspiration, intui- 
tion or supernatural revelation ; and according^ly he con- 
fesses that he does not, and denies that anybody else 
does, know that there exist or do not exist invisible being-s 
C'g-ods") superior to man, and confesses that he does 
not, and denies that anybody else does, know that men 
do or do not continue to live after bodily death as invisi- 
ble, intang-ible conscious persons. He says "we do not 
know of these thing's ; we may believe, hope, doubt and 
disbelieve, but that is all." 

This section on the Ag-nostic View I will close with an 
exceeding"ly appropriate quotation from a great American 
Ag-nostic, Col. Robert G* Ing-ersoU : 

"We do not know — we cannot say, whether death is a 
wall or a door — the beginning- or the end of a day ; the 
spreading- of pinions to soar, or the folding forever of 
wing-s ; the rise or the set of a sun, or an endless life 
that bring-s rapture and love to everyone." 

This is the view of the agnostic expressed in the lan- 
g-uag-e of the poet. 

§ 9S. — PSYCHIC RKSBARCH .SOCIETY'S CONCLUSION. 

Many of my correspondents have kindly referred me 
to the proceeding-s of the Society for Psychic Research, 
of London, and its American Branch, and sug-g-esting- to 
me that these societies have a membership larg-ely of sci- 
entists — i- e., men of more or less eminence in the various 
branches of natural science and familiar, in theory and 
practice, with the justly much-esteemed "modern-science 
method of investigation " — and that their very extensive: 



SOMK MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS 163 

research in psychical phenomena had resulted in convinc- 
ing- many if not all of the members that a personal spirit 
life after death of the body is a demonstrable fact. 

In reply, I beg- permission to say that I have been fa- 
miliar with the Society's work for the past eig-ht years, 
through careful reading- of its official reports as well as 
certain unofficial reports of some of its more eminent mem- 
bers, I have not space here to comment at leng-th upon 
the Societ3^'s methods, inferences and deductions, but I 
will make a brief general statement of what I conceive 
to be some very g-rave defects in the experimentation and 
the reasoning- of its investig-ators. 

To do this concretel5% I will take for comment the re- 
port of a recent interview by John Elfreth Watkins, pub- 
lished as a syndicate mag-azine article. Prof. James H, 
Hyslop, "late of the faculty of the Columbia University, 
and now secretar}^ and active head of the new American 
Society for Psychical Research," was the gentleman Mr, 
Watkins interviewed. He is an eminent psycholog-ist, 
and has long- been prominently active in connection with 
the late F. W. H, Myers, Dr. Hodg-son, Georg-e Pelham, 
Stainton Moses and other well-known active researchers 
of the older Societies. I do this not because Prof. Hys- 
lop is particulary vulnerable, but because he is an able 
representative of those Societies, including- the new one, 
and because in this interview he g-ives utterance to the 
most recent reports on psychic research and in which the 
objectionable features I wish to point out are shown to 
be still in existence. 

- First, Prof, H3^slop (and the others) fail to recognize 
the pS3xhological principle that telepathy, mental induc- 
tion, pertains not to the domain of objective or conscious 
mentation, but to that of the subjective, subconscious 



164 A FUTURE UFK ? 

or reflexive mentation. Hence, while he carefully pro- 
vides safeguards ag"ainst any objective communication 
of information from the "sitters" to the medium, he 
makes no attempt to prevent information being: obtained 
by the medium from the sitters, himself or his stenog-ra- 
pher, by subconscious mental induction, or "telepathy." 
This is evidenced by the following" words of the Profes- 
sor himself : 

'*! wore a black mask covering my face from my fore- 
head to below my beard when I began to visit Mrs. Piper. 
I remained masked in this way for a year, and thus hid my 
identity from her until after the principal results of the 
experiment had been obtained. But in these new experi- 
ments I am not the 'sitter.' Strangers are introduced to 
the mediums, but not until the latter have gone into the 
trance state and their eyes have been hidden in the head 
rest described. I simply sit in the room and observe the 
experiment. There is also present, invariably, a stenogra- 
pher, who makes notes, absolutely verbatim, of every- 
thing which occurs. The sitters are generally selected 
from a class that have shown some psychic tendencies. 
They are always taken out of the room before the medi- 
ums come out of the trance state. Their personalities 
are never known to the medium." 

Prof. Hyslop could scarcely have designed better plans 
for having himself deceived than those he here describes. 
All of his supposed precautions but helped to establish 
essential conditions for subconscious mental induction be- 
tween the medium and the sitter ; for suppression of the 
activity of the senses — the organs of objective perception 
— is exactly what is required to enable subjective percep- 
tion to more perfectly supercede the objective. This is 
the reason for the dark circle, quietude and harmonious 
thought of spiritualistic seances. When objective men- 



SOMK MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS 165 

tation ebbs, subjective mentation flows, and vice versa. 
It is a gross error for a psychologist to mistake 5?/3-con- 
sciousness for e^wconsciousness. The entranced psychic 
is not ^^^conscious, but subjectively ^j'^^^rconscious, and 
exceedingly suggestible. Indeed the suggestibility is so 
exaggerated that Prof. Hyslop's mask and attempt to con- 
ceal his identity would be accepted sug-gestively and act- 
ed upon, not to betray him, but to consistently co-incide 
with him in maintaining- his "part" or role — for these 
psychic performances are identical with those of theat- 
rical acting", and every great histrionic g-enius is a psy- 
chic and always in a psychic condition when truly imper- 
sonating:. And so of the "strangers" so carefully "in- 
troduced" and taken out of the room while the medium 
is in the trance state. They were faithfully accepted by 
the star actress in their role of strangers bearing- assumed 
names ; nevertheless she knew their parts as well as her 
own, just as Juliet on the stage knows the part of Ro- 
meo and his real personality as well. Romeo is fully con- 
scious that oif the boards his Juliet is Miss Mary Jones, 
" best girl " of John Smith of Pumpkinville. And so the 
medium knows the sitters are onl)^ acting, and while rec- 
ognizing them as "strangers" in the play, their real off- 
stag-e, objective personality is of no consequence to her ; 
her part is to assume any personality they, consciously or 
subconsciously sugg^est to her ; and by virtue of her psy- 
chic state of exag-gerated suggestibilit3% through mental 
induction, she reproduces such "secret" facts of that per- 
sonality as are known, consciously or even only subcon- 
sciously, to the sitters and interested observers. 

Note that I use the word "induction" as used by elec- 
tricians, and that I do not consider the "play" of the psy- 
chic any more immoral than that of the actor. 



166 A FUTURE UFK ? 

The Professor states that he selects persons of psychic 
tendencies as sitters — exactly the 'thing; to do to supply 
conditions favorable to successful mental induction. 

And furthermore : Prof. Hyslop is too positive in his 
statements that he **had never heard of " certain events 
of which a medium told him. He seems not to be aware 
of the fact that information received *'telepathically," 
i. e., by mental induction, from a sitter, interested specta- 
tor or others, by a psychic, receives it, not from that per- 
son's objective or conscious thought or active memory, but 
from his subjective or subconscious thought or dormant 
memory^ — the same source from which one re-collects or 
recalls something to conscious memory. And one can 
seldom be positively certain that he has never heard or 
read a thing because unable to recollect it. How often 
we are, unable to recollect things that we know we have 
heard^ — the name of a friend, title of a book, etc.! And 
who has not re-read a book or a letter and found things 
he cannot remember ever to have, read therein before ? 

Asked if the immortality of the soul had been proven 
to his satisfaction by his experiments, he replied: 

"My position is that the only acceptable hypothesis 
which can account for certain phenomena that I have 
observed is that of survival after death. The balance of 
evidence, so far, leaves the spiritistic hypothesis as the 
only rational one to which we can hold at present." 

Note that the Professor did not say "proved to my sat- 
isfaction,'' but he calls it a "hypothesis" to be held only 
tentatively. And this may be accepted as a fair statement 
of the general conclusion, at present, of the societies for 
psychical research. 

[Error— page 157 : " §96 " should read § 95.] 



CHAPTER XII. 

RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION. 

§ 99. — RECAPITULATION. 

In the Introductory' chapter I defined the real question 
as, not simply is man destined to a future life ? but does 
the ■personality^ consciousness of identity, memory of the 
events and friendships of this life and the recog^nition of 
friends continue in a future life ? It was shown that there 
are three principal theories of future life : 1, A life of the 
same body after resurrection ; 2, a life of the soul or spirit 
by reincarnations; 3, an independent spirit life, the ma- 
terial body being" abandoned at its death forever. 

It was shown in chapter ii. that the resurrection theory 
is the sequence of an ancient poetic fancy that all living 
thing's "died " in the " fall of the year," were buried in the 
g-rave of winter, and were resurrected at the vernal equi- 
nox, the " spring" of the year" — the springing"-up season ; 
and affirming", b}^ a sort of poetic log"ic, analogy between 
this natural phenomenon and that of the course of a hu- 
man life, the inference was drawn that the body of man 
would be resurrected at a certain epoch in time. That 
science demonstrates the impossibility of any resurrection 
of the material body except as the elements of other and 
succeeding" plant, animal and human bodies — a real, sci- 
entific re-carnation, shown in chapter iii. to be the fact 
basis of the visionary theory of re-incarnation. 

In ch. iv. I have discussed the spiritistic theory of some 
N. Testament writers and various metaphysical cults; and 
in ch. v., spiritism as a working- hypothesis was discussed 
and its inadequac}^ I think, demonstrated; this involved 
a quite thorougfh treatment of free will, determinism, and 



168 A PUTURK TJFK? 

persistence of motion vs. force, spirit, or other uncaused 
cause of natural phenomena. In ch. vi, the dualistic me- 
chanical theory was briefly commented upon as a sophis- 
tical an alog-y ; and Prof. Haeckel's alleg-ed monism was 
pretty thorougfhly discussed and shown, I believe, to be, 
after all, not scientific monism, but hypothetical dualism. 
New Thoug"ht theories were discussed in ch. vii., and 
their mysticism and vagaries briefi)^ pointed out, with a 
quite extensive critical analysis and refutation of the fa- 
mous hypotheses of the late Thomson Jay Hudson, LL.D. 
Does Spiritualism demonstrate a future life? was given a 
lengthy treatment in ch. viii., on a basis of facts of rec- 
ord and, especially, of the author's experience, leading to 
a decidedly negative answer. 

In ch. ix., was critically considered some features of 
so-called philosophy of a future life, showing fallacies of 
deductive reasoning as a means of obtaining proof of im- 
mortality, and the futility of arguments based on human 
desire, consensus and universality of opinion, moral ne- 
cessity, etc. The question of a future life from scientific 
standpoints were quite fully discussed in a long chapter, 
X., under the sub-headings, (a) the physical, (b) chem- 
ical, (c) physiological, and (d) the psychological points 
of view. In ch. xi, is embraced criticisms of the evasive 
explanation, a statement of the agnostic view, and criti- 
cal remarks on some of the methods of the Societies for 
Psychical Research, with a demonstration of the hypo- 
thetical and tentative character of their principal common 
conclusion, as represented by Prof, James U. Hyslop. 

§ 100. — THK CONCLUSION. 

In this quite comprehensive investigation of the alleged 
evidences of a future life, I find absolutely no facts upon 
which can be based a knowledge that a future life is a 
certainty, or that it is a probability or even a possibility, 
and yet this does not positively frove that it is not. 

And I find no evidence that a future life would be be- 
neficent or belief in it an incentive to right conduct. As 
long as one has even one more breath to draw, a real "fu- 
ture life" is before him and he should act accordingly! 



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